Over the years, one quality that I have come to associate with Fox Academy is immediacy. This is a quality in particular that I have always craved when it comes to music – its ability to hook its claws into you fast and swift and not let go for the entirety of a song’s duration. The Portland duo’s two most recent LPs Rabbit (2020) and Angel Hair (2019) were albums filled with these conceptual hooks and claws, with honest, simple narratives and pure, unguarded emotion – “Apple,” “Star Earring” and “Fishing” remain our favorites out of the bunch. Quite simply put, Michael Todd Berland and Christian Novelli’s ability to romanticize absolutely anything, no matter how small or mundane, is exceptional.
Unsurprisingly, their newest single “Pretty,” featuring vocals from NY based-artist Sipper, also has that breathless immediacy – the lo-fi guitar is somehow both coarse and velvetine, the synth flourishes both sharp and soft in composition; Berland’s vocals perpetually rest in this impassioned monotone that has since become part of his signature. Both sing of extreme self-consciousness, of wasted time, of lost love – if Berland’s verse provides the monochrome outline for the track (“I don’t wanna waste my time/ You don’t need to save my life / What’s so funny? / I don’t know”), Sipper’s chorus fills in the stark outline with soft pastels. “Even from my good side/ I don’t look right/ I hate where my mind goes / half the time” he sings in a half-defeated, half-melancholy tone, admitting that “I don’t wanna be here/ if you’re not.” As the track fades out, it begins to feel like we’ve just cycled through the stages of grief, sans acceptance.
“Pretty” is out now.
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photo courtesy of artist
kid with a vinyl 