Heather Trost / Brigid Dawson
Two recent albums that I missed completely for the 2020 list.
Quite unlike her material from A Hawk and A Hacksaw, the husband/wife duo with Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeremy Barnes, which is a strange case of “World music” by Western artists which somehow hold a candle to or surpass the original material, in this case Balkan music.
She’s found a way to channel Trish Keenan — the late Broadcast singer — with technicolor indie pop that instantly captivates you with the opener “Let it in”. Psychedelic hauntological soundscapes ripe with unwitting(?) references to early Ghost Box or Fonal records, it’s a shame this kind of went under the radar.
Brigid Dawson was the feminine energy that countered the manic John Dwyer experience at the peak of the Thee Oh Sees experience. So it’s fitting her solo is released on Castle Face, their home label. ~The Mother’s Network features members from Sic Alps, Fresh & Only’s and Oh Sees, and this shows the balancing, folkier poppier edge that the Mother brought to Thee Oh Sees.