The seventh album from Blonde Redhead, 14 years into their existence, is a powerful, taut, and confident record that serves as much as a rabbit hole as it does a musical endeavor. The depth and the layers reveal more than initially expected, especially if you listened to earlier releases. The tension created from the recording process is on full display, and intoxicatingly rewarding. Digging past layer after layer is what sates the appetite on 23, providing a lush world into which it’s so easy to get lost.
Bright, dreamy pop, infused with optimism, blends seamlessly with darker, more brooding themes, providing a soundtrack to what it must feel like to live your entire life on a carousel. Up and down, love and loss, yielding and pushing back. The true success of this record is the desire the band manifests in the listener to be uncomfortable yet at the same time completely content in remaining exactly where they are.