The Anesthetic
Wearing Off

The Record

For three albums, Ivan Solén wrote about carrying things. The weight, the long road, the reasons to stay. This record is about what happens after — when the numbness that made all that carrying possible finally starts to lift.

It opens at a locked door (“Nobody leaves a place they can't get into”) and ends somewhere else entirely — at the dissolving line “Between where you end and the start of me.” In between: pins and needles, a guard being ruined in the best way, hands re-learning that a touch isn't a cost.

The sound is a turn, too. Dream pop with an alt-R&B undertone — breathy, close-mic'd vocals over grooves that build the whole way through. For fans of Rhye, The Japanese House, and Cigarettes After Sex: music for the hours when thinking stops.