Glitter Veils’ Figures in Sight revels in the unexpected and unknowable. Floating amidst a valium haze, lo-fi elements intermingle with atmospheric dream pop, a lattice of textured formlessness softening hard edges of twisted outsider pop.
There’s something darkly inviting to the tangled fantasy of sound, emotion and ruined glamour which comprises the Brisbane duo’s magnetic debut.
Beneath the danceable shuffle and moments of euphoric innocence throughout Figures in Sight, there’s an element of pervasive gloom to Glitter Veils’ debut LP.
Gossamer Folds sits as the album’s luminous centrepiece. Mired in languid ennui, frontman Michael’s quietly emphatic vocals sit trapped between worlds of lovesick devotion and despair.
While these husky whispers convey the cracked diatribe of a voyeuristic outsider, they also leak with a certain charisma. If guitarist Luke’s parts could speak they would tell a story of cheap glitz, sleaze, and decay. Maybe it’s no coincidence the group hail from the “The Moonlight State.”
The damaged jewel places churning instrumentals above elastically stuttering percussion. Yet while all musical cues spiral downwards they collect into something shimmering and ambrosial, sweeping transcendence.
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In the Vein provides the album’s warmest moment, expansive navel gazing vibrations play out like some cinematic concoction of David Lynch and My Bloody Valentine. The hypnotically mantric proposition “Are we falling?” is sung until the release of sweepingly fluid guitar washes take the track to its stratospheric reaches, while Soft Touch and Gibberish Talks trade a guitar-driven sound for some interesting synth pop ideas.
Death Bed Daddy is the duo’s opus. Despite remaining soaked in its own muffled reverence, Michael’s delivery shifts from ethereal moans to inhabit a pleading, Carl Wilson vocal persona.
In a sweeping moment, Death Bed Daddy distills something symphonic and grandiose from the Glitter Veils sound palette. These vocals transition into a duet, intertwining with the barely-present flicker of a deeper counterpart.
The penultimate track perfectly embodies an underpinning convergence of damaged ambiguity, poetic heart, and recording polish which courses throughout the LP.
Despite its sound sculpting inclinations, Figures in Sight doesn’t ebb away with ever ascending layers of sound but with acoustic intimacy. A Brief Moment and the disconcerting Old Man take interesting turns while bookending Death Bed Daddy.
The flowing acoustic motif of A Brief Moment compliments wistful vocals flanked by the spectral presence of a hissing drum machine and brooding synth tones. The lament of Old Man’s echoing vocals transfigure the duo’s warped take on outsider blues into the LP’s concluding statement.
The defiant closer questions whether the track’s mourning caricature of an ageing scenester is destined to befall us all.
