Erica Eso - 129 Dreamless GMG (2018)

 

Art Pop / Synthpop / R&B

RIYL: Skeletons, Dirty Projectors, Kurt Weisman

★★★

A couple of things about Erica Eso and their sophomore album, 129 Dreamless GMG: first, Erica Eso is not a person, but rather a four-piece band started as a side project and fronted by Weston Minissali, probably best known as the synth player from angular avant-rockers Cloud Becomes Your Hand. This here group makes self-described "femmed-out microtonal synthpop" as declared by Minissali himself in the queasily auto-tuned spoken word/a cappella piece "Vaccination Free", drawing connecting lines between R&B, krautrock, ambient noodling, and vocoded electronica across just over half an hour of genre- and gender-bending fluidity.

The second thing is that 129 Dreamless GMG is, as a whole, quite a mess and I'm really only recommending it based on the surprising strength of three of its seven tracks. Opener "Gun-Metal Grey", "Love-Gun", and closer "House That's Always Burning" are some of the most forward-thinking future-pop songs I've heard in a bit, and since their lengthy compositions make up about half of the album's runtime they're more than enough to carry the record across the finish line after the several amorphous and directionless mishaps (such as the "Mirror Stage" suite) sprinkled in between. It's really only when Erica Eso's formless synth-soup congeals into hearty pop choruses (which are often illuminated even further by joyous backing vocals from Ellen O'Meara and Angelica Bess) that Dreamless showcases its true appeal, but luckily the three aforementioned tracks have enough of those magic moments to bring the record to life.