New music: Houses

Houses show beauty in holocaustal fallout…

Every now and then a track tunnels out of the darkness, belts you in the gut and twists your heart. Think the first tinkling keys of The Cinematic Orchestra and Patrick Watson‘s extraordinary collaboration on ‘To Build A Home’, before Rupert Murdoch got his soul-staining hands on it of course. Echoes of that track reverberate throughout both my ears and heart upon first listen to ‘The Beauty Surrounds’ by Houses.

Taken from Chicagoan duo Dexter Tortoriello and Megan Messina‘s most recent record, A Quiet Darkness is a concept album shaped around the tale of a husband and wife attempting to find each other following some sort of apocalyptic event. As you would expect, some of the words are simply harrowing, none more so than the opening quatrain:

Surprisingly, Pitchfork slammed the long-player in its entirety failing to see that, even if the collection of conceptualized tracks doesn’t set the skyline alight as a whole, ‘The Beauty Surrounds’ may yet be one of the tracks of the year.

For more on Houses visit:

– A Quiet Darkness by Houses is out now on Downtown Records.