For the first time since their 2010 debut, Lower Dens sound remarkably, almost unnervingly, chipper. The Baltimore four-piece’s lead songwriter and guitar-playing vocalist, Jana Hunter, mines her pop-loving past on this third album, casting a glacial sheen over songs about longing, depression and love. A thrilling contrast arises between Escape from Evil’s dark subject matter and its cheery use of slick 1980s pop signatures, creating a disorienting effect on songs such as crashing opener Sucker’s Shangri-La and the single To Die in LA. Hunter’s rich, alto voice cuts through shimmering synth lines and wobbling electric guitar riffs and takes centre stage, in a departure from the more instrumental focus of that debut, Twin-Hand Movement, and 2012’s Nootropics. Hunter sounds like a hybrid of Annie Lennox and Beach House’s Victoria Legrand on a collection of songs that take a welcome detour away from Nootropics’s exploration of transhumanism and instead focus on simpler matters of the heart.
