Album Review: Chastity Belt – Chastity Belt

The overall sound and the warm dreaminess of Chastity Belt's new self-titled album – not just its mood and lyrical content – provides the strongest appeal and connection point. Three of the four band members share lead vocal duties, adding more dynamic harmonies to this record. That and the addition of violin are key to the overlapping, drifting and lightly psychedelic sound across the ten songs. Structural experimentation, such as the drums taking a minute-and-a-half to enter the fray on Elena, take the songs away from standard rock shapes and closer to post-rock or a dream-pop version of Sonic Youth, bereft of their sharper edges. In a way, the album sounds like lo-fi jangly guitar songs recorded in high fidelity, given the rich and lush treatment of the recordings.

Many of the songs unfurl slowly, gently revealing their melodies on repeat listens. There's a distant descending guitar riff on Rav-4, and counter-playing on Half-Hearted that works like a beautifully disembodied version of Verlaine and Lloyd duelling in Television. Split is another gem, bathed in reverb and a tumbling verse that breaks through the clouds into a skyward chorus – it again shows the band quietly pulling at the threads of guitar-pop, like The Smiths and some of the bands that emerged from the underground scene in ‘80s New Zealand. The album never reaches the peak and immediacy of 2017 single Different Now, but, taken as a whole, there’s a beauty in the textural nuance and overall gentle hypnosis of Chastity Belt.