Breakup records are nothing new. They’re one of the most practiced concoctions in pop music today but every now and then, one comes along that pushes the art form in new directions. “Deep in the Iris”, the third album from Montreal trio Braids, is one such album. Rather than continuing the evolution of their former sound—as displayed on 2013’s stark, searing “Flourish//Perish” the band instead takes a softer, sunnier approach. While the lyrics are as cutting and introspective as anything you’ll come across, the music is anything but. Departing from jarring arrangements, the band employs warm Björk-esque beats and inviting rhythmic soundscapes as a backdrop to Raphaelle Standell’s stunning vocal work. Deep in the Iris doesn’t so much explore new depths as it does new heights. It isn’t the sound of fracturing, but the healing process.
Braids “Deep In The Iris” LP
Out 28th April on Arbutus Records / Flemish Eye.
There’s placid grace to Deep In The Iris, the third and latest full-length by Braids, but don’t let that fool you. Something’s churning beneath the album’s calm, cool surface. Unlike Flourish // Perish, the Montreal trio’s icy, challenging record from 2013, Deep In The Iris represents a thaw: Throughout its nine songs, singer Raphaelle Standell-Preston and her cohorts Taylor Smith and Austin Tufts art-rock with melodic allure, confessional directness and quivering warmth. Where Flourish // Perish used prickly electronics and cavernous arrangements to hold humanity at arm’s length,Deep In The Iris turns those same elements into lulling hymns to cleansing and redemption. Braids is not only more approachable than ever; it’s downright magnetic.
Her breathy vocals, as liquid and acrobatic as ever, elevate a line that in lesser hands would have seemed clichéd. Meanwhile, the band underscores the bittersweet melancholy with hypnotic patterns of percussion and synths. The hooks are subtle, but they’re huge.
That boldness, both instrumentally and lyrically, is even more striking in “Miniskirt.” In the past, Standell-Preston has couched her lyrics in a haze of poetic abstraction; here, she goes for the throat, calling out misogyny, the male gaze and the language of slut-shaming with piercing, confessional force. The song could almost pass as an epic R&B ballad, at least at first: After a sumptuous, stadium-worthy intro, it corkscrews through a tangle of jittery beats and atmospheric eeriness that never wanders into self-indulgence. Even within the album’s most complex and confrontational track, there’s an immaculate pop edge that mesmerizes.
By the time “Warm Like Summer” bursts into a dazzle of soulful croons, glimmering loops and shuffling drums, it appears that the album’s springtime release is no accident: This is the sound of renewal and regrowth, as joyful and as painful as that can be. In “Letting Go,” Standell-Preston sings with dreamy contentment, “We laid on the bank and had our fill.” On the lush, stuffed-to-bursting Deep In The Iris, Braids has done exactly that.
The Fat Angel Sings 