With “Written into Changes,” the American DJ and producer, accompanied by The Charm, injects house and bliss into her pop songs with a tenacious charm.
We’ve known the American DJ and producer, based at Berghain, for pouring her love of pop into nerve-wracking sets that suit the temple of Berlin techno. It is as heir to Cocteau Twins, The Magnetic Fields and Caroline Polachek—the opening of the record lets you sense it—that we find Avalon Emerson at the helm of a group project.
A band assembled for the occasion by Bullion and Rostam Batmanglij (ex-Vampire Weekend), with whom she discovered a shared love for dreamy music, where machines and songwriting cuddle up, where aesthetics (dream pop, shoegaze, balearic house) collide but reach an accord to remain warm, peaceful, and gentle.
Acoustic textures rather than pounding beats
Even when they dress up for a party, with that rounded groove that simulates bliss, these ten new songs do not escape a tenacious melancholy — the kind that never overwhelms but bears witness to a sensitive relationship with the world.
Eden, Jupiter and Mars or even How Dare This Beer are among those pop songs that make life more flavorful, and it is precisely in these moments, when Avalon Emerson more readily embraces her acoustic leanings, when she rejects pounding beats in favor of reassuring refrains, that Written Into Changes finds its full measure. With, as a bonus, a beautiful message of hope to be sung together: .
Written Into Changes (Dead Oceans/Modulor). Available since March 20. Live at Badaboum, Paris, on April 4.
