Sylvan EssoOw ∞ (Angel of Death Purple Vinyl) Vinyl LP

On their new album, Sylvan Esso metabolizes a life of making music with people into making art that you just love, a tactile and enveloping freefall. Written across four years in the woods in Chapel Hill, the longest the band has ever spent writing a record, Ow ∞ (pronounced “Ow Infinity”) arrives with an intense immediacy.

Most of the tracks here are Meath’s first vocal takes, and the clarity and humanness of her singular voice anchors the album in something real. It was born from a time of experimentation and collaboration, resulting in a sinewy, punchy, explosive work where the songs want to claw their way out. A technicolor totem of personal destruction, the feeling of being pummeled to silly putty and built back into something that feels almost human, almost familiar but freakish and new – a cartoonish, slapstick grin printed across a ruin.

A large chunk of the record was born from improvisation, hours spent at their North Carolina studio Betty’s finding grooves with guest collaborators including Glenn Kotche (Wilco), Matt Douglas (the Mountain Goats), Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Flock of Dimes), Joe Westerlund (Megafaun), Jake Luppen (Hippo Campus, Samia), Daniel Aged (Frank Ocean, Dijon) and drummer TJ Maiani (Weyes Blood, Neneh Cherry).

Ow ∞ marks the first time Sylvan Esso has gotten comfortable with the fact that they are doing this – where they’ve figured out all the avenues in which they can take control, and put things out the way they want to, with the people they choose, in their own studio and through their own label. For an album that wrestles so much with the out-of-control nature of being alive, it meets the duo at a time where, finally, they actually have complete control over what Sylvan Esso can be.