Vocalist and songwriter Anouska Sokolow founded the indie trio
Honeyglaze after she was booked at famed Brixton venue The Windmill and didn't want to play the shows alone. In fact, she met bassist Tim Curtis and drummer
Yuri Shibuichi at rehearsal just three days before their first performance. They soon signed with Speedy Wunderground, whose 7"-release roster already included
Squid,
Black Midi, and
Black Country, New Road, just some of the members of a fire-hot South London indie scene that also involved
Dry Cleaning. While much of the scene was rooted in post-punk revivalism -- each band with their own, divergent spin --
Honeyglaze cites jazz, classic soul, and '90s dream pop as primary influences. What they have in common with many of these contemporaries, however, is an arty, off-balance approach and literate bearing, with lyrics mostly spoke-sung in detached fashion by Sokolow. The eponymous debut was produced by Speedy Wunderground co-founder
Dan Carey and recorded in just three days. They ease in listeners in cinematic fashion with a slowly coalescing quasi-instrumental, "Start," which adds spectral vocals and various sound effects and noise to core guitar, bass, and drums. It's followed by "Shadows," a bouncy, jangly, tuneful ditty inspired by insomnia and featuring the anxious chorus lines "Mornings always feel like paradise/'Cause shadows always haunt me late at night." The group next take liberties with irregular time signatures in the context of an eerie sophisti-pop on "Creative Jealousy" ("I can't shake this feeling of constant inadequacy"), while the more playful "Female Lead" has Sokolow bleaching her hair with undesirable results ("I look nothing like
Madonna/More like an '80s horror film/I'll have to wear a hat until my golden hair turns black"). Continuing the album's theatrical quality, "Burglar" paraphrases the
Charles Bukowski poem "When You Wait for the Dawn to Crawl Through the Screen Like a Burglar to Take Your Life Away" with a spaced-out, late-night vocal jazz before picking up the tempo and shifting to a melancholy indie pop anchored by the word "fear" (and returning to the druggy A part and back again). Things take a lusher, louder turn on "Childish Things," and, despite its title, "Deep Murky Water" is a sparer, less psychedelic outing that alternates warm harmony vocals and dramatic silences. Although each of
Honeyglaze's songs seems to have its own personality, the band's tightknit combo feel and the singer's distinctly performative style give the album a rich through line that's made only more beguiling by sometimes self-loathing, relatable sentiments like "I know that I look 17/I know that I'm no beauty queen/It might come as a surprise/That I don't like being patronized" ("Young Looking"). Taken together, it's a debut that feels like a late-career exploration. ~ Marcy Donelson