To Be a Cloud

Chronique

Working again with producer Cameron Spies, the evocatively titled third album by domestic duo the Saxophones (Alexi Erenkov and Alison Alderdice), To Be a Cloud doubles down on crepuscular sounds that can seem parts exotica, daydream, and mirage. The doubling-down part was achieved by recording most of the album live to tape at Catholic church-turned-Unknown Studio in Anacortes, Washington (run by Mount Eerie's Phil Elverum), up the coast from their base of Oakland, California. Populated with track titles like "Savanna," "Margarita Mix," and "The Mist," it begins with the latter song, which accompanies Erenkov's resigned vocals and lyrics about the Pacific Northwest, dreams, and trying to catch a break, with sustained, extended guitar chords, sighing synths, and fluttery flute. The recording's echoing acoustics are perhaps most conspicuous on second track "Boy Crazy," whose thudding, low-pitched toms and contrasting rim clicks reverberate together around a lively bass groove and some of the album's more assertive vocals for one of the spaced-out album's poppier entries. On the more theatrical side is the shimmering "Savanna," a song with a similar palette but with tempos and rhythms that shift, and with sounds including saxophone and bird chirps in the mix. The Saxophones approach Twin Peaks territory on a back-half stretch of triplet-based, bass-strong retro-pop songs that include the lovesick "Goddess in Repose," the jealous "Margarita Mix," and the delusional "Hunter" ("You beg for mercy/In my fantasy") before ending on the slinkier, more psychedelic "Desert Flower," which includes the remark, "This is gonna be a weird record" at the end of the take.
© Marcy Donelson /TiVo