My Favorite Pop Album of 2018

I can’t remember the first time I heard Still Corners, but I’m guessing it was long before I knew who they were. I believe it was through a Pandora channel for a similar band, maybe Beach House or Daughter, but the track the first struck me was “The Trip” from their Strange Pleasures album (2013). That album became a big inspiration for the music I was making with my band, Here Inside in 2015 and 2016.

Their latest album, Slow Air, became my favorite pop record of 2018. The band made up of Greg Hughes and Tessa Murray, returns to the balanced approach between guitar oriented tracks and the electronic ambience of Strange Pleasures, something that I feel was lost on their 2016 release Dead Blue which leaned heavily on electronics. I prefer the blend, so the first chords of opening track “In the Middle of the Night” immediately piqued my interest. The riff reminds me of mid-career Pink Floyd, but by the time Murray launches into the first verse, her spacey effected vocals nudge the song along a spectrum from rock toward the airy dreampop for which the band is known.

The rest of the album continues this balance. There’s the sometimes moody and subtle guitar lines of “The Message” and the more aggressive distorted riffs in “The Photograph”, complementing dreamy electronics and layered, often reverb drenched vocals. For my taste, Slow Air, recalls much of what I fell in love with on Strange Pleasures, a sound that is just enough rock and just enough atmosphere, a sound that is just right.