#miasmah

“Breathe” is suffocatingly claustrophobic, sparse cymbal strikes hissing like steam escaping from a fissure. The song’s metallic sheen of reverb casts a sinister halo around the looped piano and snatches of vocal, Christensen’s guitar jutting into the spaces around the other instruments. As the track fades out, the listener is left with two rhetorical questions: “What would I do without you? What would you do without me?” There’s no resolution. The eight-minute title track is animated by brushed cymbals, murky guitar arpeggios, and an insistent kick-drum pulse that brings to mind the ambient techno of Gas. Halfway through, the song springs to life when the vocals first interject, as though Christensen has nodded off during the hypnotic introduction, then woken up and remembered he needs to sing.

“You Have It” is propelled by a tight, shuffling groove from Weis, above which Christensen’s plucked guitar reverberates beautifully. “Just An Unkind Time” brings bassist Brian Harding to the fore, which makes for a welcome shift, as his contributions up to this point are hard to discern. Harding also brings the melodic thread to closer “America,” where the interplay between the rhythmic loop in the background and the instrumental tapestry woven in the foreground is alternately hypnotic and destabilising. Just as you think you’ve worked out the way the timing works, it seems to slip out of sync.

That feels like an apt summary of Hold You Up as a whole: the foundations are always shifting, creating the waves that give these songs their uneasy, melancholic sway. Though it’s meditative, it’s far from restful — it’s acutely conscious of the thorn in its side, the lump in its throat, the deep ache in its heart.