'How the Light Felt' by Smut
“Smut” is an old-fashioned word, and it seems to be a smilingly ironic placeholder for the band Smut, whose new long-player, How the Light Felt, evokes not just shoegaze and dream-pop songs from the 1990s but also the strangely pleasurable melancholy of a Sunday afternoon spent almost entirely alone.
That “almost” leaves a space for the companionship of music, especially through the isolation of headphones, which really allow the loner to appreciate the phrases and breathing of Tay Roebuck, who readily echoes the singing of Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser, Lush’s Emma Anderson, and Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval.
Roebuck emerges as more than an echo on the higher-energy, higher-amplification tracks: in “Supersolar,” she channels the brightness of early Edie Brickell while losing all of Brickell’s hippie-child tics, and in the fuzzed-out synthesizer-and-bass dance of “Morningstar,” she has the emotional clarity of a flinty folk singer.
“Morningstar” gives the rest of Smut comparable clarity, as drummer Aidan O’Connor, guitarists Andrew Min and Sam Ruschman, and bassist Bell Cenower—who, along with Ruschman, also doubles on synths—walk along a wire that swings between organic and electronic, rock and techno, Radiohead and Massive Attack.
There can be a grab-bag effect to that back-and-forth selection of elements: the crackle of a vinyl record is fair enough at the beginning of the last song, “Unbroken Thought,” but the sudden rhythmic imitation of beat-scratching is less so, and the big loud beat of “Believe You Me” nearly overwhelms the sugary thoughtfulness of everything else.
Nevertheless, Smut regularly plumbs the 1990s for expected and unexpected gold with swirling interplay and with just a little bit of help from Stephen Street, the Cranberries and Smiths producer who mixes “Let Me Hate.” How the Light Felt is moody and melodic enough to merit the band more chances to explore.
