School of Seven Bells emerged in 2008 with a sound built on steely dreamscapes that felt familiar but fresh, coolly resigned but inviting. Seven years later and their story is scored by tragedy: after Alejandra Deheza’s twin, Claudia, left the group, founding member Benjamin Curtis was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2012 and died the following year. SVIIB is the result of his final recordings with Alejandra, a requiem of widescreen synthpop. It’s impossible not to well up during Confusion, the last track Curtis wrote while undergoing treatment, an elegiac wash through which Alejandra’s phantasmal voice sounds so bleakly alone. But the Guardian’s Jude Rogers put it best when she said during an interview with Alejandra that the album “makes life out of death”. Thanks in part to co-producer Justin Meldal-Johnsen (who has previously worked with Nine Inch Nails and M83 – influences you can also hear here), the songs really roar out of the speakers, aided by walls of reverb and pulse-quickening drums. These are stadium-sized songs under a lone spotlight, and a stunning tribute to a light that went out far too soon.
