Snowblink: Inner Classics

Arts & Crafts

Here’s the second coming from slow-burning T.Dot duo Snowblink. If you loved the lush trance-folk sound and precision harmonies of debut album Long Live, then you’re gonna get wet all over again with this ‘un.

Inner Classics marks the first music from Daniela Gusundheit and Dan Goldman since the pair relocated Snowblink from SoCal to Toronto. Full marks to the lady for keeping her sunny-side-up world view and warm as worn cutoffs vocals intact. Good thing, these being elements central to the Snowblink charm.

What’s most noticably new is a willingness to deploy fresh musical shades and get messy with more involved arrangements. Opener “Pray For Surf” offers a new meld of Gusundheit’s stained glass gossamer vocals with Goldman’s manly, and this time around, more assertive voice. Propelling the track, smart indie-pop guitar licks from Goldman.

Next up is “Unsurfed Waves” a loping little surf-pop number oblique enough to qualify as a love child of Brian Wilson and Joni Mitchell. Simply framed, instantly acessible and a jewel box for the act’s unique charms and warmth, this one has solid earworm potential.If “Unsurfed Waves” is the rocker, then “Safety Stories” is the chiller, slow, sedate, taking its time to reveal its subtle charms. Just when you think it’s going to stay a sweet-natured plodder, Bruce Peninsula’s Misha Bower checks in with a cool, full-bodied vocal correctly contrasting Gusundheit’s sweetness, in one of the album’s standout moments.

Elsewhere,“Inner-Mini Mississippi” flows beween soothing and rocking, “Goodbye Eyes” is as cute as all get out, with Goldman’s guitar pitched somewhere between Hawaiian swing ’n’ sway and country lurch, and ending with a sexy yelp from Gusundheit. The seven-minute “Best-Loved Spot” slowly builds up a throbbing dynamic which the pair manage to maintian throughout.

The bulk of the album delivers exactly what a sophmore one’s supposed to; build on the fan base generated by the debut by giving them what they came for. Plus a little something extra.

Lenny Stoute