Review Summary: soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
Anyone who has lived with or been a photographer is probably familiar with the concept of the golden hour. Essentially, there’s a period of the day in which brightness is equalised, resulting in a certain warmth and softness. Up until now, the softness in Emily Underhill’s (operating under the stage name Tusks) music has been distinctly nocturnal, but her third album opens and lets the glow out – even the cover looks like someone happy to see the sun.
I was fortunate to catch a tiny show last year in which she road-tested some of the material for
Gold, as well as shaking off some of the pandemic ring rust. Underhill, battling a cold, still looked euphoric and proud at the end of a set that included some of the equipment failing. And rightly so –
Gold is her best album to date.
Opener ‘Wake’ feels like its name, a spare devotional to breaking light that crescendos so delicately in a fountain of keyboard ascension and electronic bubbling. It’s a beautiful sound that has a sonic sister in the closer ‘Cold Storm’, but the resolution there is different – Underhill shows her alternative rock influences with heavy sliding chords over bass and drums.
Underhill had intended the album to be a study in contrasts – she spent her pandemic in a warehouse with twelve other people, and as soon the strictures were lifted, she escaped to the solitude of Devon, then alternated between these two worlds. It’s also another record that happened at a time of falling in and out of love. I’m not entirely sure those contrasts are as apparent, although some tracks have more readily visible structure, rhythm and bite, like ‘Strangers’, or a subtle, deflated beauty like ‘Read the Room’. The former song brings that rounded guitar persistence always poking over the buzz and haze of a track anchored by a muscular drum sound, buried enough but definitive. The latter song is just a simple piano motif, but as the vocal unfolds, the background elements create a sense of hovering anticipation, until the brassy slides come like tears cried with your head turned away; private, only for you.
‘Artificial Flame’ highlights perhaps a small gripe I have with the record. The pronk of the piano adornment is great, it segues into an effective pre-chorus and a pleasing synth hornet chorus. But occasionally words don’t sing well together, and ‘artificial flame’ is a clumsy lyric. Underhill also tries to tackle her anger at pandemic greed with the title track. I love the vocal run employed as a chorus, but the song has none of the grit and specificity required for a strong political statement. As a lyricist and interpreter, I still think there’s room for growth.
The cohesive, warm and intimate production cossets you, but there’s always some detail that draws you out of your reverie, like the chain of rising notes two minutes in on the languid ‘Tainted Plates’. It’s as if you are on a road trip mesmerised by the sea to your right, then seeing an impromptu rain-created waterfall from the corner of your eye tumbling down the cliff to your left.
Tusks has created a beautiful, satisfying low-key album; electronics paired with more traditional songwriting that boasts a slightly alternative edge. It’s tasteful, detailed, and a clear line of growth from her excellent debut album while still retaining much of the same DNA. Tusks is a master at capturing that moment you loosen your collar at 1 AM, looking out over the city or the confines of a comfortable room teeming with the smudge of undecided morning. With
Gold, it’s time to don your shades and step out into the light.
