Braids – Native Speaker (2011)

There are dreams, there are nightmares, and then there are those night visions that don't quite qualify as either, the unnerving images and dialogues that rattle about your head in your waking life for the rest of the day and reveal strange, forgotten details every time you pick at them. That's the kind of stuff we need to be talking about if we're going to call Braids "dream-pop" as so many others have. The quartet's bracing debut Native Speaker is almost Inception-like in its warping of reality, equally tactile and dissolute, cerebral and surreal and ultimately haunting for its refusal to answer questions the same way twice.

The Montreal group is constructed like your typical indie rock outfit-- keyboards, guitar, bass, drums, all parties contributing vocals-- but each element is employed in a way that embodies the best ideals of post-rock, where each member coaxes sound like they're trying to learn something new about their instruments at each turn. The same exploratory nature applies to structure-- Native Speaker's seven roomy compositions (ranging from four to over eight minutes) rely heavily on loops and drones, pinwheels of guitar, and clusters of bell tones. There's constant motion, each layer pushing and prodding until they prop each other into something like stasis, its minimalist bent never drawing too much attention to how it's working really hard...