Native Speaker

iTunes Review

This Montreal-by-way-of-Calgary quartet makes music not quite like anything currently on the indie pop horizon (though Warpaint and Toro y Moi simmering in a slow cooker comes to mind). Intriguing contradictions abound: the music is intimate yet gurgles with electronic blips and at times exudes an austere spareness. Some tracks have delicate, gauzy trappings, while wild-girl lyrics belie lead vocalist Raphaelle Standell-Preston’s doe-eyed aura. “Lemonade” opens with a mesmerizing sound montage that includes something akin to a babbling brook, the call of a conch shell, and Philip Glass–like keyboard patterns. Multilayered vocals and echoey atmospherics at first provide a canvass, then morph into a powerful surge with Standell-Preston’s voice circling like a dervish. You won’t find traditional song structures and easy melodies here, yet the pulsing tones, sound effects, loops, and instrumental voices never sound so far from the pop realm that they become something else. Quite an impressive debut from a bunch of kids who can’t yet buy beer in the U.S. of A.