Ah, a return to form. Though Austra has been performing ‘Habitat’ for a number of years, it’s idiosyncratic unfit for either 2011’s stellar ‘Feel It Break‘ and 2013’s mutedly great Olympia, signals that just maybe this is the direction Austra is taking in the future. Which, I’m all for, full hat thrown in a flaming fucking fire and consumed by my choice levels of assuredness there. Remixes of tracks from Olympia, like the Space Echo mix of ‘Home’ landed square on top of my year end lists; but that’s only because they made the beat and the pulse [heh] of my heart flow in that satiatingly dark manner that Feel It Break did in spades.

Catch a free download at the Soundcloud link.

I’m so fucking selfish that way: but after knocking me out through killer melodies on ‘Spellwork’ and ‘The Beat And The Pulse’ (amongst other tracks), I wasn’t ready for them to make the same awful mistake Washed Out did last year in his trip to sunny, easily forgotten, musical melodyland land. Thankfully Austra’s wonderful intuition always left vascular structures for a darker core to run through, and at their center even Olympia’s weakest tracks still had their saving graces. ‘Habitat’ feels like Feel It Break-era Austra with a little more advanced synthwork, which, if you’re like me, will seal the deal for you on the track as soon as you hit the chorus.

9

Add to the story...