DIANA began after another project that Toronto artists Joseph Shabason (whom you might recognize as the guy blowing saxophone all over Destroyer's Kaputt) and Kieran Adams had intended to work on fell through, leaving them with a bunch of studio time and Rural Alberta Advantage producer Roger Leavens at their disposal. Unsatisfied with demos that featured their own vocals, they eventually reached out to Carmen Elle, a friend who had toiled around the local music scene for years, playing guitar with Austra and fronting her own garage-rock duo, Army Girls. Almost immediately she became a full-time member of the group, assuming all of the band's vocal responsibilities, and the decision to bring her in pays out dividends on their full-length debut, Perpetual Surrender, a confident collection of vaseline-smeared synth-pop that marries chillwave atmospherics with strong songwriting.
Let's address the chillwave thing first-- yes, there are a lot of aquamarine environments to get lost in on Perpetual Surrender, and yes, it's unafraid of pushing Elle's vocals so deep into the mix that it sounds like she's singing from the other side of a wall, but it does so with a panache that never forgets that this sort of thing can also knock the air out of your stomach when done right. A lot of the credit goes to Leavens, who proves himself an instinctive producer that knows when to keep adding and when to pull back and let things breathe. "Foreign Installation", for instance, is shrouded in a pre-dawn fog that calcifies into a black mass of a chorus before dissipating back into a fine mist. And then there's "Strange Attraction", where clanging percussion leads the way forward as much as the track's approaching-storm bass. He even manages to help turn the saxophone solo of the title track into one of the album's most rewarding moments, earning it with a keen ear for structure that finds the band more often than not placing sounds where they'll achieve maximum impact.
An emphasis on lower frequencies gives Perpetual Surrender a surprising heft in addition to its lush Balearic sprawl; it ends up a sturdier incarnation of a sound often charged with lacking bite. There are basslines that not only approach funky but actually deserve the adjective, producing a physicality that only someone who knows just how valuable a rhythm section can be to a band is capable of conjuring. When DIANA clear everything out, they're just as effective: "New House" is the album's sparsest moment, consisting of nothing more than moaning floorboards and intermittent bass, and it shines the spotlight on an affecting vocal performance from Elle, who effortless toggles between been-hurt-before reticence ("Am I just another thing to use, grow tired of, and throw away?") and empathetic reassurance ("Baby, I know you're terrified"). It bowls you over with gentle-but-firm encouragement.
As much credit as DIANA deserve for their ability to create texture, Perpetual Surrender is first and foremost a pop record, and it's most successful when it plays up this ambition. Its songs-- mostly tales of romantic uncertainty aimed inward rather than outward-- were all written by Shabason and Adams, who have a knack for large earwormy hooks. The type of vocalist whose voice actually sounds better the harder it's pushed, Elle imbues these songs with a lived-in intimacy that belies the fact she didn't have a hand in penning them herself. "Now's the time for believing/ Lay your hands on me, I need healing" she sings on "Born Again", bestowing carnal relations with the power of spiritual purification. It's the album's best song, possessing a widescreen romanticism that the rest of the album can't quite duplicate elsewhere. A general wobbliness pervades the album, and there are places where it might benefit DIANA to zoom further out and sharpen their focus. Case in point: the album-closing instrumental "Curtains" is entirely inessential, aiming for epic but barely achieving consciousness.
This sense that DIANA are still figuring out how to best fit together the pieces they've got to work with serves as a reminder that Perpetual Surrender is a debut record-- a very compelling one, but a debut nonetheless. Now that Elle is a full-time member, it will be interesting to hear how their eventual follow-up differs in its songwriting, given that she does wonders with the material here. There are enough explosive moments to suggest that DIANA have another gear to explore.
