The sound of a baby crying begins
Home Address for Civil War
, the debut album by North Carolina-based dream pop duo
Eros and the Eschaton
. In the case of this album, it's no anonymous baby braying but the child of bandmembers and couple
Kate Perdoni
and
Adam Hawkins
. After meeting when touring in separate bands, the two fell in love, started a family, and eventually settled down in Greensboro, North Carolina, intent on recording, living together, and raising their son. The dreamy, layered pop of the album suggests both the kind of single-minded insularity that comes from a time of isolated focus as well as the intimacy of family. Starting with the booming "20 Different Days," the band buries
Perdoni
's
Breeders-esque
melodies deep under layers of shoegaze guitar tones and clouds of reverb before exploding into the catchy electronic hooks of its chorus. It's
Last Splash
by way of
Loveless
, and one of the best tracks on the album. Rhythm takes center stage for many of the other songs, with "Carry the Water" marrying booming acoustic drums with growling organ and obscured vocals in an
Arcade Fire
-like display of triumphant sound. "Terence McKenna" unfurls in a similar way, with distorted percussion and marching guitar melodies all but drowning out
Hawkins
's driven vocal lines. The band drifts seamlessly through washes of fuzzy ambient pop like "You Know I Do," again pulling drum sounds to the top of the mix. The lopsided amounts of fuzz and joyful noise call to mind the mixing experiments of stalwarts like
the Boo Radleys
Slowdive
, and also put
in a class with
Beach House
,
A Sunny Day in Glasgow
, or any of their brightest dream pop contemporaries.
is the warm, delirious product of two creative souls deeply in love, nested away from the rest of the world and finding a collective voice in the process. ~ Fred Thomas