Individual members of the chamber pop group Cuddle Magic have worked with the likes of Beyoncé, Amanda Palmer, and Okkervil River. But for better or worse Cuddle Magic have never come across as pop-music natives. Their conservatory training always shows through in the combination of complex structures, bright harmonies, and snappy humor that has defined their sound. Ashes/Axis marks a major turning point. The proper follow-up to 2012’s Info Nympho (following a 2014 full-length collaboration with toy pianist Phyllis Chen and pianist Ran Blake), Ashes/Axis captures Cuddle Magic diving into the “pop” side of “chamber pop” with more fluency and confidence than they’ve ever shown in the past. Right off the bat, the smooth, spit-shined mix by Bryce Goggin (Pavement, Atony and the Johnsons) contrasts dramatically with the dusty immediacy of the band's previous records. From the fat, synthetic groove of leadoff track “Slow Rider” onward, they've traded the primarily acoustic instrumentation of past work for gurgling, bottom-heavy synths and electronic drumbeats.
On Let It Be You, last year’s collaboration between Cuddle Magic bandleader Benjamin Lazar Davis and Joan As Policewoman, Lazar Davis went for the commercial jugular with an audacious turn at arena-ready bubblegum R&B. In some ways, Ashes/Axis behaves as a companion piece to that album. Like Let It Be You, several of the songs have a basis in intertwined Ghanaian rhythmic patterns. And it’s obvious that Let It Be You's bassy thump was still in Lazar Davis’ ear when he sat with Goggin to run the original studio tracks for Ashes/Axis through post-production effects.
But Lazar Davis’ bandmates bring such strong presence to the table that they offset the exaggerated, sweaty-handkerchief affectations that nearly turned Let It Be You into a caricature. Though Lazar Davis remains the principal songwriter, Cuddle Magic’s fellow multi-instrumentalists Christopher McDonald and Alec Spiegelman also contributed songs, as did guest co-writers like Bridget Kearney of Lake Street Dive and Lip Talk’s Sarah K. Pedinotti. With all those hands on deck, it's no surprise that Ashes/Axis contains more layers, both musically and thematically. And Kristin Slipp’s vocals, whether she sings lead or backup, serve as a kind of backbone that binds the album together.
Where Joan Wasser opted to keep pace with Lazar Davis’ playful melodramatics on Let It Be You, Slipp’s more reserved style conveys an infinitely wider range of emotions. If you go back to the Info Nympho track “Hoarders,” she invests the line “Shit/that/fills/our/homes/is/too/hea-/-vy/to/move/and/so/we/leave/it” (a veiled reference to feeling trapped in a relationship) with a lingering resentment that belies the tune’s quirkiness. On Ashes/Axis, Slipp approaches her vocal parts like an actress with a healthy aversion to overstatement. Once again, she laces the music with faint traces of woe, bringing a sense of everyday believability to the songs even when the lyrics aren’t explicitly clear.
When Slipp harmonizes with McDonald on the line "give me the keys / to your condo" on the new tune "Getaway," her voice supplies an extra touch of mournfulness to an already melancholy mood. Easily the most haunting and atmosphere-heavy Cuddle Magic song to date, the song percolates with detail. Throughout the whole album, Lazar Davis and Goggin find creative ways to vary the balance between natural sounds and effects. On "Getaway," they filter a helium-pitched Slipp vocal (that's not actually pitched-up) to mimic violin strumming. And when they turn McDonald and Slipp's vocals into spectral blurs of reverb at the beginning and end of the tune, the music causes goosebumps, scaling breathtaking heights the band has never attempted before.
Strangely enough, Cuddle Magic’s move to a chillier, more digitized palette actually adds dimension to the songs. By reaching outside their comfort zone, they bring the content of the songs to the foreground. Which is not to say the band has lost its organic flavor. On the contrary: at the end of the quasi-title track, “The First Hippie on the Moon, Pt. I,” for example, the music unravels as all of the instruments simply collapse into chaos. At that moment, Cuddle Magic land surprisingly close to a rock band, closing its set out in a heap of smoldering noise. By that point, though, the band’s transformation into a formidable pop act is already complete.
