Both separately and in unison, Stone Filipczak and Victoria Rose seem to inhabit parallel planes of feeling. “Embrace the heat, submit to the cold,” goes a line on ‘Love in the Dark’, from Autosmile, their spell-binding sophomore album and first for 4AD under the moniker @ (pronounced “at”). Trained to the classics, the Mind Palace Music follow-up opens with a “to be or not to be” conundrum before melting the boundaries between dreams and reality, punishment and comfort, infatuation and heartbreak. In one of those dreams, the world even turns to Rose and says, “Whether you are winning or losing it’s all the same/ The music and the joy are both tied to the pain.” As for how the Philadelphia duo processes these dualities, musically their approach hasn’t changed much; though they told me three years ago they were considering recording music in person together now that they were finally based in the same city, they still opted to work on their parts individually. But “in person” and “apart” is another threshold @ tend to erode. Listen to their music at any fidelity and their voices are as inextricably (and inexplicably) inked as their songs, aching but never not lovely.
1. Bird
Over an instantly beguiling acoustic guitar riff, the “you” that haunts Filipczak’s narrator seems to be the very idea of death, especially when traced by morose strings. But the opening track twists itself enough times to suggest some trepidation over the decision to go instead of waiting for his turn; the chords and harmonies of the chorus have an oddly soothing effect. There’s a warmth to Rose’s vocals the moment they are introduced, though her presence turns uncanny as she sneaks up on the final lines of the second verse, even more so when she proclaims “I will become what I hate.” Snaky, clicking percussion rubs against an electric guitar solo, like flying too close to the sun on wings of rusted metal.
2. Love in the Dark
Familiar guitar chords and sunshiny melodies would have made for a more welcoming introduction to the album, but that’s not how @ like to play the game. Instead, ‘Love in the Dark’ comes in like a morning breeze after a horrible nightmare. Taking the lead this time, Rose is cruising down the highway, spotting “222 Psycho on a license plate.” Her persona has its own intrusive thoughts, though, calling the singer up in poetic terms that seem to describe the song itself: “But hey, memory is a hot breath of air/ Down my neck that’s not soft and not sweet but a dare/ To show you I’m here now.” Filipczak’s backing vocals are loopy and virtually unchanged from Mind Palace Music, but they, too, soften by the end. When she lands on the titular words, Rose’s voice lifts up into a heavenly falsetto, while his is low, reassuring. A playful array of instrumentation rides out the final minute.
3. I Know You Are (But What Am I Thinking)
In case the format of the title wasn’t enough of an indication, the duo said they “met our emo threshold with this one,” rhyming as it does “sinking” with “drinking.” But like a ship changing course, it steers into hushed waters containing some of the most poignant lyrics on the album, beginning with the self-consciously on-the-nose line “My style is constantly changing.” On “Symptoms seem to be worsening/ I’m simply not a person,” they sing the word “simply” as if it comes from the same root as “symptom,” rendering the sense of alienation a biological inevitability.
4. Earthly Love
True to its title, ‘Earthly Love’ is gorgeously down-to-earth and lyrically decipherable compared to everything that surrounds it. But @ don’t pare back their sound without colouring in the margins, adding cello and flute as well backing vocals from Nina Ryser that amplify its vulnerability.
5. Your Dog
After conversing with the world of dreams on the previous track, the duo are back in the uncanny valley – where “la la la”s rise awkwardly at the start of a scruffy, off-kilter folk tune, and Rose crawls behind Filipczak’s tremorous lead vocals like a phantom. It’s unsteady but full of subtly ingenious details, like the production glitches that seem to scrape the singer’s consciousness clean, bit by bit.
6. Untitled
In casting herself as a little girl that keeps hiding in a dream – a role she inhabits elsewhere on the album – Rose seems to age her voice up, prompting Filipczak to also harmonize in an innocent whisper. Fantastically small, almost illusory in its pop song runtime, it takes us on a ride that darkens only with the “promise of a sweet and distant impossibility,” which triggers Nino Soberon’s cello to summon clouds that dance with the duo’s stretching voices, simultaneously scaling and trembling upward.
7. I’m Not in Pain
The cello now takes center stage, holding down the main riff. Such is the urgency of ‘I’m Not in Pain’ that we even hear real drums for the first time on the record (courtesy of Garrett Burke, the Philly producer known as Gloorp), putting some real weight behind Rose’s possibly self-directed advice: “Put back the barrel of sorrow/ Take stock of everything you have.” A virtuosic guitar solo drags the song out until its layers are peeled back to just bass and cello, worming the hook into your mind for good.
8. Punish My Mind
Those dynamic rhythms give way to breezily exotic percussion (juxtaposed with actual monkey howls) on ‘Punish My Mind’, a Beach Boys-esque tune with all its surrealist tendencies pushed to the max. “When I try to punish my mind I dream of an alternate timeline,” Rose sings, but no otherworldly realm is capable of retaining her interest like the simple interpersonal math of you ± me. Is the last stream that she sings of at the end one of consciousness, water, or live video? The boundaries are too porous to tell the difference.
9. Judgement Farmer
The 30-second intro sounds like a portal to heaven, though the opening line reveals it to be just a gateway to a reclusive mind. There is some palpable distance between this song and the last, but how could you not tie them together with lines like, “To be with you there are some knots to undo/ The web is frightening, the more you pull the more it tightens.” ‘Judgement Farmer’ offsets its spindly structure with lovely harmonies, supple bass, and (I can only venture) an alternate tuning that seems to foster the chance for growth.
10. Autosmile
For the longest song on the album, the title track seems to glide past in no time. More than that, for a song that’s purportedly about a breakup, ‘Autosmile’ is imbued with immense gratitude for the bittersweet nature of love, its capacity to automate the same smile it has, previously on the album, aged and broken down. I don’t think Rose and Filipczak have ever sung with more conviction than they do the chorus of this song, the regret they almost spit into the consonants of too bad. When Rose says demonology won’t save her, after all, it’s a reminder that, as she put it on ‘Earthly Love’, Regret, Time, and Luck are the real demons. You can’t have the last two without kneeling before the first.
11. Amity
The simplest song to sing along to on the album isn’t quite the sweetest; here, even positive words like “amity” and “constance” carry a heavy shadow. In the pursuit of something enduring, the singer is confronted with an emotional drought, a vacuum of possibilities, the hell of oneself. Except that one self is composed of two voices that, more than anywhere else on Autosmile, sound nearly indistinguishable.
