Still Corners – Dream Talk (2024)            


Review:
It makes so much sense for Still Corners to write songs inspired by their dreams that it's somewhat surprising it took them six albums to do it. Letting ideas and phrases ripped from the pages of Tessa Murray's dream journal guide the surreal serenity of Dream Talk may be an obvious choice, but the results never are. Where many dream pop acts blanket their songs in an otherworldly haze of distortion and feedback, Murray and Greg Hughes use space, clarity, and subtly odd production touches to create a more delicate kind of unreality. In much the same way that Murray morphs from a voyager to a voyeur on "Secret World," the abstract metallic shimmers that surround her lend the song a shifting, mirage-like strangeness. Some of Dream Talk's strongest moments pair its elusive sonics with remarkably tight songwriting. The heartbroken synth pop of "Lose More Slowly" is one of several songs that continues Last Exit's feeling of soundtracking a long, late-night drive to nowhere. Even when Still Corners don't depart radically from their past, it's easy to appreciate their gift for creating haunting moods on "Faded Love"'s ghostly AM pop or "Crystal Blue"'s hyper-romantic tropical paradise. Murray and Hughes also perform a skilled balancing act with Dream Talk's arrangements. Though "Today Is the Day" builds into a kaleidoscopic swirl of guitars and electronic textures, it never seems busy, and while "Turquoise Moon"'s midnight surf ballad pares things down to little more than guitar and Murray's voice, it feels timeless, not unfinished. At times, the mood is so sustained that the album resembles one slowly evolving song. At its finest, though, Dream Talk is an alluring reminder of the power of visions and fantasies from a group that's mastered how to bring them to life. — Review by Heather Phares on allmusic



Track List:
01 - Today Is the Day
02 - The Dream
03 - Faded Love
04 - What Is Real
05 - Lose More Slowly
06 - Secret World
07 - Let's Make Up
08 - Crystal Blue
09 - The Ship
10 - Turquoise Moon


Media Report:
Genre: dream-pop
Origin: London
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)


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