Line & Circle - Split Figure (2015)

Ohio-born, Los Angeles-based Line & Circle will follow up their acclaimed singles and eponymous EP with Split Figure, their debut full length album due October 2nd via Grand Gallop. The LP was recorded live to tape in Los Angeles with producer Lewis Pesacov (Best Coastʼs Crazy For You), and in Philadelphia with producers Jonathan Low (The National) and Brian McTear (The War on Drugs), who also mixed the album.

In deeply self-aware and intimate detail Split Figure explores the elusive and daunting task of pursuing self-knowledge in a world where, ironically, staring into screens and photographing ourselves incessantly has failed to make the process any easier.

Combining music that is instantaneous and propulsive with weightier lyrical themes of self- discovery, the album is unafraid to stand apart without being inaccessible or esoteric. With nods to early 4AD dream pop and chiming I.R.S. Records-era guitar rock, it is rhythmically urgent, melodically rich, and intellectually curious, embodied by the firm belief that the pop record is still a great art form.

After arriving on the national scene in 2012, Line & Circleʼs “Roman Ruins” and “Mine Is Mine” singles and eponymous EP received wide acclaim, appearing on a range of year-end lists on both sides of the Atlantic. Several U.S. tours followed in support, including appearances at the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas and two stops at the CMJ Music Marathon in New York City, which featured a live radio broadcast for KEXP when the band was merely months old. Line & Circle soon began opening for some of their favorite bands, including being hand picked by The War On Drugs to support them at a sold-out show at The Troubadour in Los Angeles last spring.

These experiences helped solidify the bandʼs new material and shaped the thematic content of the record. “We are all split down the middle,” says singer/rhythm guitarist Brian J. Cohen of the album title. “There is an inner self that reflects what we think we are, and an outer self that is how others really perceive us. True self-knowledge is when you become aware of each, and begin to reconcile both into one.”

The albumʼs cover art, Paul Kleeʼs 1927 watercolor Phsyiogonomic Lightning, further underscores this idea. While teaching at the Bauhaus, Klee assigned his students to somehow make two discrete shapes—a line & circle—occupy the same space so as to form a new identity altogether. This was Kleeʼs own attempt at the assignment. Does the great black zig zag that splits the figure symbolize the self commenting on itself through its own shadow?