Blurry The Explorer - Angel Ecology (2023) Hi Res

Usually, you’re lucky to get one or the other. Do you want a record with intoxicating atmosphere, its sounds so vividly and unusually rendered that they seem to activate senses beyond hearing? (In this case: the feeling of warm sun cut with cool breeze on your skin, the smell of wildflowers in the air.) Or do you want one with a solid foundation in composition, its turns of melody evincing careful attention, working themselves into your memory in a way that only seems effortless? Albums in the first category are often content to coast on good vibes alone; those in the latter may be too fussy about conveying their formal nuances as accurately as possible to worry about tickling your ears with vintage synths and effects pedals. Angel Ecology, the second full-length from drummer/composer Jeremy Gustin’s Blurry the Explorer quartet, is the rare record that does both. Strip it down to bare songcraft and you’d have more than enough jubilant tunes and jazzy chord changes to chew on. Flip on the blinking array of electronics that Gustin and company surely had going in the dual studios in Lisbon and Brooklyn where they made it, and the experience is something like mounting a high dive and cannonballing into the center of a kaleidoscope.

Blurry the Explorer’s core membership comprises Gustin plus bassist Ricardo Dias Gomes and guitarists Ryan Dugre and Leo Abrahams. On Angel Ecology, they’re joined by a gang of guest vocalists (Kalmia Traver and Tōth of Rubblebucket, Indigo Sparke, Tall Juan, and others) and horn players, all of whom give the album the atmosphere of a roving party. Roughly half the tunes take the shapes of vocal-led pop, albeit a skewed and whimsical version of it. The others are more amorphous: a funky synth vamp that seems loose and improvisatory until it blooms into delicate melody, a single ambiguous refrain whose arrangement gathers around it like morning fog. It’s a tricky record to pin down in terms of genre. On the Tōth-featuring “In the Foot,” post-punk begins to resemble twisted mariachi music when a trumpet arrives to double the spindly electric guitar riff, suddenly celebratory instead of menacing. “Window Spider,” the following track, starts like something from a lost Ennio Morricone score, with blasts of horns and drum kit providing sporadic punctuation to a lonesome fingerpicked figure on nylon-string guitar. In the second half, voices and saxophones enter with an easygoing melody, and birds chirp softly behind them, transporting us to someplace lush and pastoral, far from the high plains of a Spaghetti Western.

“Window Spider” is the most obviously striking example, but all of Angel Ecology has a filmic quality, with instruments arranged like actors in scenes of transcontinental adventure. This sensibility helps to unite its divergent styles and lead singers, as does Gustin’s ambition and generosity as a composer. Every tune goes beyond what you might expect of it, full of gratuitous additional hooks and ingenious production ideas. Across the album, you can hear stray laughter presumably that of the players in the studio, delighting in what they’re cooking up. The most infectious example comes midway through “East LA,” which sounds a bit like what might happen if South Bronx disco-rock originators ESG started writing bossa nova melodies and hired contemporary psych-pop wiz Dave Fridmann to run the boards for them. The music stops for a second, and somebody starts giggling, and then he’s cackling, and then he’s singing along. Can you blame him?