I often return to this line from Simon Reynolds' Retromania: "Unlike digital formats, analogue degrades through overuse: each listener kills the sound she loves." There's a certain comfort in that kind of reciprocity, and anyone who's ever accidentally reset the listening history on their iTunes library and felt like they'd wiped a part of their identity clean is familiar with the digital world's maddening indifference to our affection. With that observation, Reynolds hits on the unifying and fundamentally human allure of chillwave, lo-fi, smear-pop, and any other kind of contemporary music that makes a conscious choice in an Auto-Tuned world to sound less than pristine. It's music trying to approximate the grubby, hopelessly destructive way we love books, records, and each other.
Like a pre-owned Delorean or a Berlin cassette slowly decaying in the bargain bin, Portland trio Blouse's self-titled debut comes to us sounding like it's already been colored by somebody else's use. Though it's got an unabashedly Reagan-era sound, it's the record's almost pathological obsession with the past that places it so squarely in the now. Any of its 10 tracks could sit comfortably on pretty much anyone's 2010s playlist: it broods like a lower-fi version of Charli XCX's Cold War-tinged tunes, it beams through cloudy dark like John Maus' murky pop, and it even boasts a song called "Videotapes" on which the synths sound like warping videotapes.
And yet, Blouse amounts to something more evocative and suggestive than trendy pastiche. There's one obvious reason: Some of these songs are just really that good. "Into Black" strikes the right balance of lush atmosphere and driving force, while the mid-tempo "Controller" evokes an austere cool. It's album opener "Firestarter", though, that best expresses the young band's manifesto, introducing them as a dream-pop group intent on razing the roof. "Let's forget the ceiling," vocalist Charlie Hilton beckons beguilingly over a wash of twinkling synths, "It's just made of stone."
Hilton's voice is breathy and commanding though not terribly distinct-- think Victoria Legrand channeling Trish Keenan minus a bit of je ne sais quoi. The propellant at the heart of Blouse is bassist Jacob Portrait, who also plays with Portland psych-poppers Unknown Mortal Orchestra: His steady pulse gives the songs just enough oomph to keep them from getting lost in their own gloom. Unlike many of their contemporaries, Blouse aren't out to deconstruct 1980s pop so much as dutifully replicate its essence. It's an easy thing to do wrong, but Blouse find success by not overreaching their grasp. It's beside the point to fault a record like this for not being innovative; by the end of this stretch of songs, there's something almost noble about their poker-faced commitment to time travel.
There are a few moments when all the backward glancing becomes a bit heavy-handed, but in their most inspired moments, Blouse find the connection between the limits of outdated technology and the terrible bliss of desiring something impermanent. (In one song Hilton's idea of fun is watching a lone blackbird perched on a telephone wire, "Just long enough to notice when he flies away/ Because he always flies away.") Blouse aren't just nostalgic for the golden years of MTV pop, but for an entire way of interacting with the world-- for the romance of a time when some things still felt out of reach. "Videotapes" finds Hilton longing to see the face of her perennially camera-shy lover. "What it would be like to see you again," she croons, wishing she had a videotape to remind her. That this sentiment feels like such an anachronism in a culture satiated by instant gratification only makes the track more heartbreaking. Blouse harkens back to love in the time before GPS to mine an enduring truth of pop music: getting lost has always sounded good.
