How Lost

Album review

The Fauns made their mark as one of the finer acts of the shoegaze revival of late 2000s and early 2010s -- and when years of silence followed the release of 2013's Lights, that's how they seemed destined to be remembered. When they returned eleven years later, it wasn't surprising that their sound had changed; Lights already hinted that they needed to go beyond merely putting their own stamp on shoegaze. On How Lost, the Fauns don't abandon the sound of their past so much as they fuse it with other styles into finely shaded musical hybrids. Though the title track shows they still know how to make blissful songs that would've fit in with shoegaze's first wave, the band finds more inspiration in the other genre that took the U.K. by storm in the early '90s: dance music. Fortunately, the Fauns take a more sophisticated approach than just grafting beats and synths onto their songs. Instead, they use these elements as an expressive complement to Alison Garner's urgent whispers and the washes of sound that surround them. The driving rhythms and arpeggios of "Mixtape Days" make Garner's layered vocals even more seductive and elusive as she beckons listeners to get lost in the music. She loses herself just as completely in someone else on "Shake Your Hair," a piece of hazy, throbbing electro pop that Ladytron or Chromatics would be thrilled to call their own. The The band gets a little more intimate with equally winning results on "Afterburner"'s aching guitar pop and a twinkling cover of Freur's 1983 cult classic "Doot Doot" that celebrates the mirage-like quality of the original and the Fauns' own music. Several of How Lost's other standouts continue Lights' adventurous spirit, which has only grown with the addition of guitarist/film composer Will Slater to the band's ranks. Sometimes, the album's cinematic feel is subtle, like the looming drones that cast an ominous shadow over "Dark Discotheque"'s shimmying beat. Sometimes, it's more ambitious, as on "Spacewreck," a "Space Oddity"-like tale of death among the stars set to swooning post-rock, or "Modified," a darkly alluring pairing of skittering beats and pitch-shifted samples reminiscent of Jamie xx and crisply enunciated buzzwords ("Sensual/Self-aware/Evolving/Dangerous") that evokes a dystopian future -- or present -- as eloquently as Black Mirror or Ex Machina. How Lost is just as transporting and otherworldly as shoegaze at its finest; that it's easily the Fauns' best work to date makes their comeback all the more welcome.

© Heather Phares /TiVo