Gazelle is Jeff Dimpsey, formerly of Hum and National Skyline, and Adam Fein, of Absinthe Blind. There, I said it. Get it out of the way now.
The key point is that the strength of this album should not be over-shadowed by the pedigree of either artist. This project furthers the work both have previously done. As an album, Sunblown is full of space-filled, shamble-to-float atmospheres. Some, like “Sonhead”, are built around a core mood of ambience; others, like “At Last, Friend,” or album closer “The First Rays” work themselves into almost-typical indie pop songs. More importantly, even the most upbeat tracks are full of a cool distance that breathes melancholic intimacy.
The album opens with “Jets”, which builds on its programmed drums, ice-on-the-window pads and sun-aura synth which soon breaks to reveal a disaffected but clean, upfront vocal. From the beginning, Dimpsey and Fein demonstrate how gracefuly they manage to steer clear of genre pigeon-holes. Gazelle doesn’t fit in with either the wall-of-sound Claire Records or Club AC30 crowd - librarians will have a hard time categorizing this among the resurging dreampop/shoegaze movement of the moment. Still . . . this is the music of half-sleep. It’s lucid . . . rock for dreaming, but of later-life, back-porch reflection dreaming. The album’s entire demeanor is too Mid-Western, too grounded in maturity and experience, to even need to compete with the younger age’s sturm und drang, and it’s all the better for it.
It’s important that Sunblown could easily have more guitar, more upfront drumming or sidechain-compressed basslines roiling our subwoofers - there’s also plenty of room for more lyrics, more super-group star power draw. Instead, Gazelle choose the path of subtlety and restraint. The duo knows when to ride the fader a little lower on the noise than we might expect, which in turn allows everything else to stretch out more in the mix. There’s a late afternoon sun here for us, but we’re with the duo, a few inches below the surface, looking through the opaque. Chilly piano and a moving synth bass on “Lineal” give way to an extended downtempo passage through the middle section of the album’s longest song. We’re unsure of the outcome as vocals reverberate over a re-building drum line, until finally everything but a single tone falls away for the final minute.
“Phasedown” follows this with the true lullabye of the album. The soft vocal drifts over the horizon-twinkle of guitar and synthesizer before Erin Fein, Adam’s sister and currently of post-Absinthe Blind project Headlights, lends vocals just before the song erupts quietly in a falling-star storm of dark light.
If there’s any downside here, it’s that, much like National Skyline before, there’s probably not a great chance of the duo touring much, which is unfortunate. There’s obviously a lot going on here studio-wise, but if they could somehow find a way to share and extrapolate on this experience with us over a few beers and a loud PA, we’d all be better off for the experience.
The album can be purchased through Parasol, and of course Gazelle have a Myspace for further listening and updates.
Gazelle - First Rays (alternate master version, from Sunblown, Hidden Agenda, 2008)