Dearborn, Michigan's
Windy & Carl
have been crafting their singular form of free-flowing ambient space rock since the early 1990s, influencing legions of post-rock and drone musicians throughout the decades. The duo have mostly remained active, often issuing limited cassettes, LPs, and digital releases through their own
Blue Flea
imprint or other small labels, but all of their main full-lengths from 1998's
Depths
onwards have appeared on Chicago's venerable
Kranky
. Arriving eight years after the dazzling
We Will Always Be
, 2020's
Allegiance and Conviction
is one of their most concise albums, with no songs reaching ten minutes, and in some ways it feels like one of their rawest works since the early days. "The Stranger" opens with almost unnervingly direct vocals from
Windy
over tense yet still detached guitar rumbling. Singing about a secret underground rendezvous, she declares "We've got a job to do." The vocal melody of the enveloping "Recon" seems to echo early
New Order
, and the song equally conveys feelings of isolation and weightless, pressureless freedom. The blissful "Moth to the Flame" expands on this unbound feeling until it becomes full-on flight, and it's as soothing and liberating as one could hope for. "Alone" snaps things back closer to stark reality, beginning with a harsh burst of distortion and cycling through heavy, shifting feedback loops, expressing an alarming moment and a period of apprehension and uncertainty. The fear never quite goes away during the album's final two songs, but at least "Crossing Over" seems to find a sense of safety and solace in nature. Expressing a wide range of emotions in a short timespan,
is a vivid, engrossing experience, and just as vital as every other entry in
's unbeatable catalog. ~ Paul Simpson