“I think we throw around the term narcissist a lot and often forget what we’re referencing - a tale of a man who rejects the true and tangible love of his lover to spend his life intoxicated by his own reflection. For me, the 'Modern Mirror' is our digital internet identity reflected back at us.” For their third full-length, Drab Majesty members Deb Demure and Mona D took their obsession with Greco-Roman iconography one step further by stealing away to Athens to write and record, returning with a sprawling modern allegory to Ovid’s Narcissus myth. They’ve taken the sound of 2016’s excellent The Demonstration and distilled it even further, slimming down to a lean eight songs that deploy their trusty toolkit of gated drums, neon synths (Roland JX-8P, SH-101, Korg Monologue + more, full gear list in the liner notes), cavernous vocals and chorus-soaked guitars more potently than ever before. But have a look beneath the glossy new wave lid and you’ll find an unexpected spiritual kinship to Johnny Marr, Felt’s Maurice Deebank or the classic fingerpicked folk of Tim Buckley. Opener “A Dialogue” sets the stage with swaths of Deb’s incantations piled on top of one another and drenched in reverb, before settling into machine-assisted synthpop mode with “The Other Side.” Other highlights include the blurry, Less Than Zero-smeared “Noise Of The Void,” sentimental elegy “Long Division” or the utterly gorgeous “Oxytocin.” Hard to find anyone else depicting the sinister side of vapid and hedonistic Los Angeles so colorfully right now. 33RPM single LP pressing on limited colored vinyl, housed in matte jacket with stunning art direction from Juan Mendez (Silent Servant, Tropic Of Cancer, Jealous God). Recommended.

• black & white 'smash' colored vinyl
• printed inner sleeve
• limited edition of 500
• original release year: 2019
• music label: Dais Records 2025

reviewed by him downstairs 07/2019