Album Preview: I Break Horses - Chiaroscuro

Nashville – Eighties inspired synth effects may be cool again, but that doesn’t make working with them any less challenging. I Break Horses’ new album Chiaroscuro is what happens when echoes of the eighties are resuscitated and used with abandon. Artists like M83 (who I Break Horses has opened for), have worked to use updated, more palatable technology and distance themselves from the tinny, android noises characteristic of eighties music. But Maria Lindén, the creative force behind I Break Horses, is embracing them. She has made a modern album with vintage sounds.

Sometimes it works wonderfully. The song “Denial” is crunchy and dark and shows off the best of Chiaroscuro’s song palate. Backward loops break into monumental, throbbing verses, which sound, not surprisingly, like something M83 would come up with.

I Break Horses toys with feelings of anxiety and release as electronic effects are used to evoke subliminal feelings of discomfort. A trans-y, house beat opens the song “Faith,” which quickly slides into a high-energy chorus. Off-kilter verses evoke the same feeling as listening to a guitar that is slightly off-key, but the chorus comes back again to release the discomfort. Yes, sometimes I Break Horses’ approach to computer-music works wonderfully.

But sometimes it doesn’t. Chiaroscuro oscillates between songs that are strong and interesting, and ones that are a little too heavy into Star Wars sound effects (“Medicine Brush”), and some that fade into “blah.”

Lindén should probably be cut some slack on the lyrics side of things, since she is a Swede and presumably not a native English speaker. But the breathlessly sung lyrics to “You Burn” sound trite: “You burn, baby you burn. Turn, you turn. When the world is turning, baby you turn.” Lyrics with rhyming variations of “burn” repeat again and again to a slow, methodical beat that never reaches a crescendo or anything close to heart pulling. The opening track is not indicative of the aforementioned gems on Chiaroscuro though.

Chiaroscuro is Lindén’s second release with Bella Union, and it shows a more mature version of I Break Horses. If I Break Horses’ last album, Hearts, had a sort of frothy warm running through it, then the new album has a gothic glow. This darker side, combined with Lindén’s shimmering, delicate voice and the sterility of vintage synths makes for a Frankenstein of eighties pop music. Lindén is pushing the shoegaze pop genre in a grungier direction. Despite a few dips in quality, it’s an album worthy of starting off 2014.

Chiaroscuro is available on January 21^st but can be heard beforehand on Hypem.

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Caroline McDonald

My first memory is of singing Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” quietly to myself during preschool naptime. Perhaps it’s because I’m from Nashville where an instrument lives in every home, but music has gripped me for as long as I can remember.

After dabbling in many parts of the music industry—recording studios, PR, management, labels, publishing—I’m expanding into music journalism because I’m yet to find anything more rewarding that finding and sharing new music.

A longtime sucker for girls with guitars, my musical taste unabashedly follows the songwriting lineage of Dolly Parton and includes Patty Griffin, Gillian Welch, and Neko Case. But not to pigeonhole myself, my music love is big love that stretches from R.L. Burnside to Animal Collective to Lord Huron.

I’ve recently moved home to Nashville after living in Boston and Big Sur for several years. I’d forgotten how music pours onto the streets ten hours a day, seven days a week. I’m honored to share the creative explosion happening here. If your band is in the area or of the area, please reach out!