There's just something timeless about Montreal. It carries a deep European history into a future rife with possibility, clear-eyed concern, and ever-expanding cultural diversity. These elements are among the building blocks used by the many recondite and stylistically adventurous artists the city produces — much like Atsuko Chiba, who present a sure-footed path through the perpetually shifting terrain they choose to walk through Montreal's geography.On their eponymous fourth full-length, the band immediately introduce their complications with "Retention," a song that dares you to define genre, swapping new style elements in and out of its slow, twilight creep. Vocalist Karim Lakhdar's rap-accented lyrics trace the boundaries of a story filled by the band's pliable guitar and bass lines, shot through with unpredictable drum fire. The results are akin to getting seduced by a party in the process of trying to match its energy.There's a flowing, organic quality to Atsuko Chiba's music that captures the electric feeling of translating ideas into fully realized expression. It carries an in-the-moment intensity you find in contemporaries like Beak> and the Smile, the quintet shifting easily from the gentle synthesizer flow of "Pretense" into the anthemic and articulated aggression of "Future Ways," a track that suggests former tourmates ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead at their most expansive.A purposeful deployment of texture seals all of the potentially disparate elements Atsuko Chiba package together. Among them, the band's precise motorik rhythms somehow allow space for slinky R&B bass lines to be elevated by '80s keyboards that suggest both new wave and post-punk updrafts. It should feel overcrowded, but instead it feels simply like the kind of dense exactitude achieved by fellow Montreal adventurers the Besnard Lakes or SUUNS.Just when you think you've figured out the party's vibe, the last-call acoustic guitar is deployed, and "Locked and Array" ushers you to the fire escape and back out into the night — held in the same gradually evolving embrace that lured you in as you part.
Wavelength
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