Exitmusic - Passage

It comes as no real shock to discover that an album of such histrionic drama and cloying atmospherics has been part-created by a professional actress. More well known (for now) for portraying Angela Darmody on Boardwalk Empire, Passage sees Aleksa Palladino team with husband Devon Church to create a cinematic, crackling monochrome of dour dream-pop – thunderous rises and falls of eerie and powerful texture, steered by Palladino's impressively versatile vocal, moving from whisper to bellow to suit the ebbing textures.

Any faintly dream-pop male/female duo is going to inevitable draw comparisons with Beach House at the moment, but Exitmusic's sound is only the most distant of cousins – at once far more expansive and high reaching than the Baltimore outfit, as well as far more creepily melancholic; crashing drums accentuating the peaks, while looped screams and feedback swirl around the mix for added effect.

Passage undoubtedly enjoys a singular and robust 'feel', a central identity to the record which often distracts from what the band is actually doing. (You might be surprised, for instance, to hear that the menacing, urban paranoia of 'The City' is being used to deliver the sentiment “tear down your suffering, bone by bone”). This slight misdirection plays to Exitmusic's advantage, as well as doing the album a disservice. It's an advantage in that the carefully drawn and consistent identity of the sound makes Passage a fully inhabitable and immersive experience. It's a disservice, however, in that the album moves from barely-there delicacy to stormy crescendo so deftly and subtly as to sometimes glide by without perception.

As a result, the album affectively rises and falls with the thick drama of a film score (as befits the bands name) but also shares a score's tendency to occasionally wash past in the background, becoming a victim of its own fluidity. Since the band's seismic shifts in textures don't have a tendency to make a fuss about themselves, restrained tracks like 'The Wanting' and 'The Cold' distinguish themselves as highlights not because of their stripped back quality in and of itself, but because of their willingness to explore a single texture for their duration – paradoxically offering the ear a firmer invitation to really poke around the gorgeous arrangements.

Because Passage is undoubtedly gorgeous – as cinematic as a piece of work you'll have heard in some time, as well as performing a remarkable job of transcending its would-be coldness through liberal injection of hearty emotion. And while the bombast of the emotional peaks sometimes threaten to go over the top, they never go beyond the reach of Exitmusic's abilities – which, when you consider the colossal breadth and force of moments in the throat-grabbing title track, is no small statement to be making. If you've been waiting for a band to attempt to sustain the melodrama of a movie's pathos money-shot for the duration of ten tracks straight, then Passage is undoubtedly your album of the year contender. For the rest of us, the idea of Passage might be a more icy pill to swallow, but Exitmusic make it go down a lot easier with their gorgeously woven arrangements and well-rendered execution.