Verdugo Hills is Okinawan-American artist Caroline Lufkin’s follow up to her 2006 debut album, Murmurs and finds her treading similar, but not unpleasant ground. At first glance it is an introverted, esoteric piece of work, all skittering electronic drums, atmospheric keyboards and excessively reverbed vocals, guitar lines sneaking through throughout “Swimmer”. Nothing we haven’t heard on the more phenomenal Múm records such as Finally We Are No One.
You could throw a weighty pebble in Reykjavík and hit ten bands that sound like this. So far, so ethereally dull. Then something happens at 1:21 on the third track, “Sleep”. Something recognizable that can only be described as a melody takes shape, followed by a bridge of quite lovely keyboards and glitch electronica drums, followed by a repetition of the first minute, or a ‘verse’. Before you know it, it’s a song! Atmospheric, elegiac and still somewhat abstruse, but a song nonetheless. The record continues in this vein and by seventh track “Waltz” you’ve realized that you’re listening to a pop record. A bloody pop record! Where did this come from?
Caroline’s ability to mask the poppier tendencies of the record behind walls of glitch drums and reverb serve her well in terms the initial twist from ambient electronica to amtronipop (a genre I just made up) and is genuinely clever and delightfully surprising conceit. The problem arises when the listener is quickly made aware that this seems to be the only trick she knows, and it soon becomes stale.
“Seesaw” and “Pink Gloom” are lovely, but feel like a retread of the tracks that preceded them. Aside from the relative sparseness of album closer “Gone” and the stutter of “Words Flutter” there’s not an awful lot to hold the attention of the listener over the course of its ten tracks. That said, there’s a lot to like about this record and is full of interesting moments so long as you don’t listen too intently to the bigger picture. This makes it perfect background music whilst simultaneously being much more interesting than most of the ambient guff that gets played by self consciously ‘cool’ types at dinner parties. With their wine. And their napkins. And whatever world music is popular that week. Yeah. Do one.
Conclusion: Beautiful but ultimately shallow.
Personally I feel this record is no way “shallow” or “stale”. This album touched me like no album did in years and I listen to music from Reykjavik. In fact, I lived there for a couple years. I think this record doesn’t click with you, the reviewer. If you read Caroline’s interviews it seems her goal is not to impress people. It’s a translation of her emotions and a way for others to relate. Caroline’s new record has many levels of beauty- gorgeous electronic landscapes, tasteful melodies, a colorful spectrum of sounds, etc. I highly disagree with the review above.