On Swisher, the captivating 2013 LP from Blondes, the Brooklyn duo managed to capture the tactile sentiment of their fabled live performances on wax. On Warmth, their aptly titled third release, Blondes repeat the feel of their last record, for better and for worse.
Kicking off with the slow build and scrambled oscillations of "OP Actual," Warmth segues into a loose and bright pair of motoric beat-keepers, "Clipse" and "Quality of Life," giving Blondes their most well-sequenced and digestible thread of songs to date. But as they get into a mid-album run of similarly structured tracks ('Trust," "Tens" and "KDM"), it's clear that they're working within a certain aural structure that borrows from Swisher as much as they do from one another.
That's not altogether a bad thing; for the initiated, there's not a single moment throughout the album's ten tracks and 65 minutes that falls below the standards Blondes have laid out up to this point, as "MRO" utilizes a low-end synth hum that sits underneath (and brilliantly contrasts) a crashing and rising denouement, gorgeously flowing into the busy but tranquil album closer, "Cleo."
On Warmth, Blondes haven't drastically improved on their sound, but they feel at home delivering ten more high-quality textural cuts.
