Album Review: Brand New Abyss by The Blow

Soon after the release of their 2013 self-titled album, the Blow's Khaela Maricich and Melissa Dyne began incorporating live electronics, including vintage samplers and homemade synths, into their music. Their follow-up, Brand New Abyss, proves doing away with sample-based tracks was a smart move: Like never before, the Blow's music and lyrics are razor-sharp tools that they use to cut complex relationships and issues down to size. Brand New Abyss' sparse, abstract sonics refocus the duo's witty meta-pop, taking it to ever more literate levels.

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Since the release of The Blow's self-titled long player in 2013, the world has turned decidedly maximalist. Pop music, politics, sex, food, fashion, feelings, thoughts, even fucking coffee have had their dials ramped up to deafening. If we can't hear you in 2017, you don't exist. So how have Melissa Dyne and Khaela Maricich reacted? Not quite as the world wants.

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It’s been four years since The Blow put out a new album—the last being their self-titled release in 2013. A lot has happened in the outside world since then, socially, politically and musically. The same, however, seemingly cannot be said for the interior worlds of the band members. In fact, their new album, Brand New Abyss, is a dramatic downturn from the 2013 effort as well as the band’s 2006-07-era releases, Poor Aim: Love Songs and Paper Television. Released by K Records, the earlier albums exemplified the label’s bedroom pop sound while also embracing aspects of performance art.

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The Blow has always bundled electro-pop, twee-punk, and performance art into spindly confessionals, but it has done so in three distinct incarnations. First, as the millennium turned, it was Khaela Maricich.

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