Sylvan Esso - Free Love

September 25, 2020 - Loma Vista Recordings

From its inception electronic pop duo Sylvan Esso, consisting of singer Amelia Meath and producer Nick Sanborn, discovered in their sound a unique mode of experiential exploration, and they’ve been following that mode ever since. With a home base in Durham, NC, in a region steeped in musical history that’s rich and slow to digest, they are a lighthouse, a powerhouse and a power couple all in one. Their creative approach is consistent from one album to the next, but the subject matter changes as they adapt to the scenery around them. It’s as though they invented a new walk and are walking in unison down an unknown path together, trying it out in different terrains. We listeners are following behind, investigating their tracks, trying to piece together the story from the record. Attributes we’ve written down so far in our spy journals are: casual, playful, detailed, bouncy, blithe, and sometimes profound. 

Their third and latest album, Free Love, continues the hike forward into married life, a craving for human connection, and unknown futures. Thematically, these songs are about the heroic act of just living life, an act that becomes more and more heroic as times get harder. Meath’s lyrics are authentic and generous with us listeners, smartly written and wise, and highly personal to her. She touches on subjects such as tinnitus, grieving a planet you learned about as a child but will never be able to see as an adult, commitment to fidelity, being a maker in a world of Top-40 cliches, frustrating arguments about nothing, and the strangeness of meeting the vision of yourself someone else has in their eyes. Compositionally, these songs maintain the familiar minimal short format we know and love from Sylvan Esso, crafted from repetition, rubbery synths, cute mechanical pop beats, latent spirit, and layers of Meath’s soft vocals, blooming around and around themselves. They are not epic pop anthems with wide swells designed to wring us out and wear us out. They are simple, quick, often groovy, and filled with little unexpected moments designed to lift the corners of your mouth a little. You might even let out a laugh. 

With demonstrated self-awareness and emotional maturity, Free Love pushes high contrast between the poetry of their words and the limit as it approaches “frivolity” of the music itself. It’s filled with quirky singsong jingles that get stuck in your head as you vacuum your floor for the umpteenth time this year. They trick you into humming along with a smile to sorrows and woes and confusing feelings and nostalgia and strange imaginations. They trick you into rediscovering the joy of play. The album’s overall energy is approachable like a sparkly swimming pool that’s easy to enter and exit. It’s deep, but we can still clearly see the blue bottom with our childlike eyes. Non judgemental, edible existential questions without the angst or despair, you can swim here without fear that it will get too real. ☔