9.16.2013

Emily Reo :: "Peach"


Emily Reo has one of the best bedroom albums of 2013, and maybe one of its finer efforts period with her latest LP, Olive Juice. Like its namesake, Reo's laptop jams - think Grimes meets Beach House - emerge as punch-drunk and unsettling. The use of auto-tune is decidedly unironic as her glitchy, pretty symphonies spin from her fingers. On "Peach," she channels the melody from Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs' 1960 single, "Stay," updated here with an anxious and drugged out modernity. The chorus is a beautiful mess, the loops and electronics fighting each other to the point of near dissonance, Leo stuck in layers at the center, nearly buried in the hum. Rival for the best song on the record, "Coast" stutter-steps its way through seven-and-a-half minutes that are as good as any released this year. There is opportunity cost to be sure, but everyone should be listening to these songs and this record. It holds the power to transmute, full of contemporary sorrows and sticky melodies.



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