In hindsight it's clear just how much Icky Blossoms were acting on their first album. The Omaha trio's self-titled 2012 debut was beholden to the rigid, impersonal conventions of electroclash, even when it seemed as if the group's interests lay elsewhere. There were moments where the band's primary singer Sarah Bohling in particular sounded as if she longed to emote, but she restrained herself, because genre protocol dictated she remain as dispassionate as the sequenced pulses behind her.
On Icky Blossoms' sophomore album Mask, Bohling recasts herself as a real, vulnerable human being. Though the band still draws from the same pool of '80s synth-pop, dance, and electro-rock, they've replaced the aura of debauched sex that hung over their first album with a sweeter, more romantic focus. That retool is underscored by the change in producers. For their debut, Icky Blossoms recruited TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek, who manned the boards as if wearing surgical gloves, but on Mask they partner with a collaborator closer to home, Saddle Creek standby Mike Mogis, a producer who isn't shy about leaving fingerprints.
Mogis has some experience with electro-pop, with credits on the Faint's Wet From Birth and Bright Eyes' glitchy one-off Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, but generally he doesn't do genre exercises. His specialty is albums that sound unmistakably like Saddle Creek albums—snug, vividly colored records that play as if crafted by a bunch of friends squeezing into a studio on a night off and helping each other out. Mask fits that mold, with contributions from a half dozen or so players from the usual circles, including Cursive's Patrick Newbery, who plays trumpet on a track, and the Faint's Todd Fink, who lends some additional production and earns an especially warm thank-you in the liner credits ("Your knowledge of electricity is invaluable and your dog is awesome.")
At its best, Mask captures the spirit of the label's heyday records. With its squealing guitars and manic tempo, "Phantasmagoria" channels the vicious side of the Faint's miswired electro-punk, while the record's catchiest single, "Living in Fiction", elbows its way toward one of those generous, jubilant choruses that used to leap so effortlessly off of Bright Eyes albums. And Bohling even sounds like a typical Saddle Creek protagonist now. She sings opener "In Folds" as a prolonged sigh, her voice quivering with echoes of Conor Oberst and Jenny Lewis. Mask's songs often place her in the same position those label luminaries used to write from, unable to shake the traumas of past relationships and unsure of her ability to secure future ones. "I get so trapped in my head sometimes I turn what I love into a monster," she laments on "The Spiral".
Though it lacks the sparkle of some of the album's snappier electro-pop numbers, one of Mask's most lasting songs is also its most naked. On "Want You So Bad", the band dials down the synths to a murmur, accentuating Bohling's loneliness with some barren guitar strums as she pines for a lost love. "I let go for you," she sings, "Forever I've been waiting now." It's a decidedly un-showy track for a band that usually prefers very showy sounds, and it probably would have brought the band's chic debut album to a halt. But it slots in comfortably on Mask, a follow-up that finds Icky Blossoms letting their guard down and embracing the values of their music scene, where there's no higher form of fashion than wearing your heart on your sleeve.
