Album Review: Founds - Hadean

While Hadean may sound like something a bogan couple would call their child, it's technically the name of the geological age roughly four billion years ago. It's also the first full-length album from Brisbane's purveyors of dramatically atmospheric pop music, Founds. The record seems to be broadly about the hidden, mysterious and just out of reach – whether it's the psychological, like the inner lunatic of Avalanches, or physical, like the voices that appear out of the darkness of Caves, or the imaginary, like the unspecified illusions of Hadean Earth – whispers and secrecy fill this album and give it a serene, untouchable quality that's just beautiful.

There's a tendency in this kind of layered, orchestral music to go for the easy emotional release, sometimes through unnecessary auxiliary percussion or overdone strings or the same sparkling guitar sound we've heard on every indie pop album since 2007. Founds mostly manage to stay away from these clichés, though they're there in the predictable frantic endings of both Caves and Holograms. But for the most part the band let their music be subtly lovely, especially on final track Unknown which is wonderfully Sigur Ros-esque and sounds like an Oscar-worthy film score.

The vocals on this record are not just beautiful but dynamic. They're used as another layer of percussion in Avalanches, as tribal chanting in Caves and left pure and piercing on Vessels. This means that the most compelling tracks on Hadean are generally the ones where the vocal provides both the emotional and musical centre, often evoking a toned-down Bjork. Hadean is a strong and beguiling debut, with rare vision and focus that mostly elevates the album over its few inconsistencies.