GIRLPOOL - What Chaos Is Imaginary LP

Label: Anti-

From their snarling punk-folk beginnings, the LA duo of Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad have always carried a disarming honesty to their music. Across two albums, 2015’s ‘Before The World Was Big’ and ‘Powerplant’ in 2017, Girlpool have nestled themselves in a cosy twee-pop corner of light grunge nostalgia and teenage kitchen sink melodrama.

‘What Chaos Is Imaginary’ has a certain graceful maturity, more so than those previous records, with a laissez-faire slacker rock easy flow that Mac DeMarco fans will enjoy and some inverted alt-folk balladry, delivered with a Jesus & Mary Chain knack for crystalline shoegaze on a cinematic scale – albeit brought into a focus by crisp percussion and shimmering production.

Highlight ‘Swamp And Bay’ offers a rare hook-laden respite with a country-ish radio jangle and scuzz-rock climax, but everything stays consistently true to the core of the record: a very human and honest partnership, in a universe all of their own.