LA sisters Piper Durabo and Skylar Cielo made, in 2011’s Headbangers in Ecstasy, the bloggiest of all blog band albums. Their second takes its template – hazy dreampop, synth haze, slightly gothic guitar – and explores a darker Hollywood delirium. On Peccavi and Tell Me there are hints of Madonna’s early pep, but dreamy and dissipated, with Durabo intoning about “wishing fiction into fact” and urging you to “forget about tomorrow”. LA’s mystical side surfaces in Six of Swords, Scorpio Rising and the title track’s sample of the occultist Manly P Hall, while End of an Era introduces an anti-war sentiment and a delicious, doomy lassitude. If the songwriting isn’t always the match of the sheen, the best moments here – Panarchy, What You See, Autodrama – are dangerously seductive.
