Molly - All That Ever Could Have Been (2019)

All That Ever Could Have Been is the full-length debut from Molly, an Austrian duo whose crystalline ambience and cinematic post-rock songscapes seem designed to resonate among the Alpine mountain ranges they call home. The work of singer and guitarist Lars Andersson and Phillip Dornauer, who covers drums, bass, and synth, Molly operate out of the Tyrolean capital of Innsbruck, a visually dramatic city not necessarily known for its music scene. The band gained wider recognition around Europe in 2016 and 2017 thanks to a trio of EPs that introduced fans to their spacious amalgam of low-key dream pop, light shoegaze, and post-rock arrangements. U.K. indie Sonic Cathedral offered them a deal, allowing them to cast an even wider net with their first long-player. Consisting of eight slowly developing tracks, All That Ever Could Have Been is a windy, contemplative outing full of guitar pedal orchestrations, skittering drums, and purple clouds of textural noise that drift across the stereo field. Sonic touchstones like Slowdive and Sigur Rós come to mind and when Andersson dips into his falsetto on songs like "The Fountain of Youth" and "Weep, Gently Weep," the duo leans even more heavily into the latter's influence. Molly have a fine ear for small details and some of the album's more striking moments involve gentle scatterings of birdsong (the pastoral "Vogelnest"), distant cowbells (the title track), running water ("As Years Go By"), and other natural elements native to their locale. In terms of its approachability, the LP is familiar in tone, though somewhat of a grower. While its charms might take a few spins to unpack themselves, Andersson and Dornauer have applied their own unique set of filters and experiences to the dreamier side of post-rock on this solid debut.