Crystal Eyes - The Sweetness Restored (2022)

Canadian dream pop act Crystal Eyes branch out on their sophomore album, The Sweetness Restored, adding definition to the unpolished tones of their earlier material and experimenting with more involved instrumentation. Since their formation, Crystal Eyes have centered around singer/songwriter/core member Erin Jenkins, who filled out her evolving songs with a rotating cast of backing players and enlisted the mixing and engineering help of some of the best names of Canada's indie scene. The band's 2017 debut full-length, The Female Imagination, was a murkier, more lo-fi reading of Jenkins' songs, sounding at times like a lost weekend four-track jam between Mazzy Star and Pavement. The Sweetness Restored is a different story, retaining some of the shoegaze texture and shambling charm of the band's earlier output while using sharper production and arrangement choices to shape the songs into capital "P" pop. Opening track "Wishes" charges out of the gates with energetic acoustic guitar strums and melodic bass leads. It's cut from the same cloth as New Order or Head on the Door-era Cure until the end, when soaring theremin lines start interacting with the guitar leads and synth patches. These types of unexpected shifts in instrumentation guide the album. "Like a Movie" sees mellow organ trading off with crunchy guitars, and "I Still Believe in Love" melts into a psychedelic wilderness halfway through, with acidic guitar textures swirling around Jenkins' demented version of a spoken girl group monologue. "Pretty Dumb" matches a spindly paisley underground-styled guitar riff with bright, brassy synths, and closing track "No Heaven" takes a surprise left turn from drawn-out dreaminess into bouncy rhythms, flutters of harp, and clouds of angelic vocals. The Sweetness Restored steps up and out in several directions at once, Jenkins taking Crystal Eyes to exciting new places with all of the ambitious experimentation but managing to keep her strong songs as the main focus throughout.