Miserable Chillers - "Audience of Summer"
Words by Zach Romano.
Miserable Chillers’ new album Audience of Summer is a beautiful mess of contradictions. This is a record that is expansive in its scope but leans so hard into the MIDI origins of much of its sound palette that it feels contained within a bedroom or even a desk. It’s an album that utilizes such an outrageous variety of sounds (pedal steel, balalaika, frog chirps, “aaah” synths, and on and on) that somehow, a coherent aesthetic of scatter emerges. Audience of Summer could soundtrack a night on a Bushwick rooftop or a Super Nintendo JRPG.
Miserable Chillers songwriter Miguel Gallegos writes psych-tinged sophisti-pop with almost theatrical progressions and vocals. His pocket symphonies immediately bring to mind Destroyer’s MIDI-heavy classic Your Blues, especially on album closer “Antipodes.” Much like on that album, the aesthetic here is deliberately in your face and might not please everyone, but when everything clicks, like on album highlight “The Glass,” it really works. Gallegos’s lyrics seem to take a cue from Dan Bejar as well: “Summer in the city of eyes; no surprise that after such a terrible year, my clothes have gone out of style,” he sings on “City of Eyes.”
Despite clocking in at just 26 minutes, Audience of Summer contains a diversity of styles that would be difficult to emulate even on a much longer album. “La Nave del Olvido” sounds like an evening in an underwater lounge; “Animal Trial” is a video-game waltz with a palpable undertone of unease; “Card Captor” starts with autotuned vocals and Four Tet-style twinkles and ends as a club banger.
The heterogeneity of sounds and styles here can be jarring at times, but this isn’t to the album’s detriment. There is a unique creative sensibility that links all of the tracks on Audience of Summer, and we would highly recommend giving it a listen. The album is out now on limited edition cassette via Baby Blue Records. Get your copy via Bandcamp or stream it on your platform of choice.
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