Constant Smiles - Kenneth Anger - Blue - VINYL LP

When Drop Nineteens disbanded in the mid-'90s, singer Greg Ackell decided he would never make music again. He wouldn't noodle around on a guitar in his basement. He wouldn't get a group of friends together just to jam. He was done with music entirely. Following the of the shoegaze masterpiece Delaware in 1992, and the intricate experimentations on National Coma in 1993, the group disbanded. They shared stages with Radiohead, Hole, Blur, PJ Harvey and Smashing Pumpkins. They went from being teenagers in Boston to mid-twenty-somethings with a few MTV videos, a couple BBC sessions and numerous festival appearances under their belt. So when Drop Nineteens ceased to be, Ackell felt content. He had the rest of his life in front of him to figure out what he wanted to do. Music was a closed chapter. That was until 2021, when a friend from the band's early days got Greg on the phone to suggest making some music together, just to see how it felt. Instead of shutting it down like he had been doing over the years, he decided to entertain the prospect. For the first time in nearly 30 years, he picked up a guitar with intent. He immediately called up Steve Zimmerman, the band's bassist and fellow guitarist, and the two got writing. It felt effortless for Ackell, like he never stopped writing music. InchWe were off to the races,Inch he says, InchBut also the question came up what does a Drop Nineteens song sound like today?Inch Enter Hard Light, the band's stunning third record. It's the band's proverbial follow up to Delaware, a modern Drop Nineteens record that is completely singular in it's sound and vision. The first task making Hard Light was, of course, getting the rest of the band back together. Drop Nineteens is an inherently collaborative project. Ackell writes the lyrics, and he works with band members Steve Zimmerman, Paula Kelley, Motohiro Yasue, and Peter Koeplin to

Vinyl LP pressing. 2021 .

Much like the night-blooming flora the album takes it's name from, Constant Smiles' Felte debut Moonflowers is the product of slow, largely unseen patterns of growth. The New York-based band forged a path all their own on the way here, gradually growing from an amorphous collection of highly conceptual ideas into something easier to grasp, with every step of their unlikely route leading to Moonflowers, a subtle masterpiece of internally-born ambient pop.Constant Smiles was formed in 2009 by Ben Jones. He was joined by different collaborators in versions of the band that manifested as noisy soundscapes, scenic chamber pop, or icy coldwave-adjacent synth-pop, often released on opaquely-designed, ultra-limited albums named after favorite film directors. A move to New York and a few records on Sacred Bones resulted in more people becoming aware of the band, but Jones and friends remained in constant flux. The great unlocking of the Constant Smiles puzzlebox happened when the band solidified into a permanent core lineup when drummer/vocalist Nora Knight joined Jones and longtime bassist Spike Currier in the end of 2022. After years of being defined by visceral change and inconsistency, this stabilized personnel shifted the sound, emotional coloration, and impact of the band. With Knight and Currier providing counterpoint and structure to Jones' always percolating creative drive, the songs became more streamlined and direct. Still airy and dream-like, the trio version of Constant Smiles that produced Moonflowers has cleared away the clouds of vaguity and uncertainty that could make earlier versions of the band feel harder to connect with. Like the best moments of foundational albums by Talk Talk or Nick Drake, the lived-in majesty of Adrianne Lenker's Songs/Instrumentals or Jim O'Rourke's excursions into chamber pop, Moonflowers reaches it's dynamic swells naturally, almost