Pact - Clear Blue Smoke LP (Blue, Clear)

Slothrust is principal songwriter, guitar player and unrepentant aesthete Leah Wellbaum, with drummer Will Gorin. On their fourth full-length album The Pact, Slothrust constructs a luscious, ethereal cosmos perforated with wormy portals and magic wardrobes, demonstrating more clearly than ever the band's deft shaping of contrasting sonic elements to forge a muscular sound that's uniquely their own.Bizarre and mundane, tender and confident. The awkward duality of the forever outsider, rightly reclaimed as power. This is The Pact. Produced and engineered by Billy Bush in Los Angeles (the band's new home base), Slothrust's album is a confident journey across 12 songs that oscillate between a quietly reflective tenderness and a slick, sleek confidence; balancing playful innocence with ballsy swagger. "This is the most fun I've ever had making a record," Wellbaum confirms. "We were able to take risks. I'm saying yes more than no these days."