On his own, Thomas Meluch records cloudy electro-acoustic songs as Benoît Pioulard that sound hand-cobbled, while Rafael Anton Irisarri drapes brooding ostinatos with dusky delay and reverb (he also makes ambient techno as the Sight Below). Though their individual styles are different, both of them decompress lacy, yearning melodies into slow oceans of melancholy, and on 2012's self-titled debut as Orcas, their styles combined naturally, with small acoustic guitar songs drowned in gritty quasi-choral harmony.
Their second album, Yearling, retains the debut's vast scale, glacial pace, and visual splendor; the distortion of "Petrichor" dramatically unveils the kind of sweet motif, clasped in drones, that anchors the album. But Orcas fill in their abysses more fully than before, bringing the human presence closer to the surface. Contributions from Efterklang's Martyn Heyne and Telekinesis' Michael Lerner on drums bring prior inklings of shoegaze, post-rock, and analog garage pop to the foreground, adding instrumental definition to previously nebulous masses of mood and tone. On "Infinite Stillness" and "Half Light", electric and acoustic guitars ride over the gray swirls of atmosphere rather than vanishing into them.
Where Orcas was mostly spun out from guitar and vocal improvisations, Yearling is said to be more specifically composed, and it certainly sounds that way. Despite a pleasing graininess, the songs are more crisply structured, with the terse, arid groove of "An Absolute" smoothly hinging on controlled cymbal crashes. Meluch's voice is sometimes drawn out in somnolent lines and sounding downright bouncy elsewhere; it's striking how peppy and soulful he sounds, far from his typical distant, affectless moan. Though he slips in and out of focus, there are several songs where he's undeniably *there—*a specific person singing with feeling, not a disembodied ghost moaning over some tundra.
"Filament" recalls the vaguer portions of Orcas' debut, with Meluch's monastic intonations fading away in a martial beat and porous streaks of harmony. His vitality is missed on more heavily instrumental tracks, like the implacably shuffling "Selah" and the tape loop hymn "Tell"; in fact, it's rather surprising that the most murky, atmospheric moments are Yearling's weakest spots, as atmospheric murk is what they used to do best. The song craft and performance is more compelling when the ambient dressing is there to make the pop pop, rather than hiding it.
