The Daily Spin, September 20
St. Lucia | Matter
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023.
Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here. Additionally, you can check out a list of my favorite song from each album right here.
Album: Matter (2016)
Artist: St. Lucia
Link:
My favorite artist that shares a name with a small Caribbean island nation, St. Lucia make a beautifully gauzy sort of shimmer pop, much more the electronic side of what I affectionately and lovingly call FIFA music, pumping synths and a husband-and-wife team that complement each other’s voices delightfully.
Matter is their second album, following their breakthrough effort When The Night, and though it’s always felt a little bit to me like St. Lucia are the sort of group that are, in some sense, one-hit wonders, the fact of the matter remains that everything they’ve put out, if not always popular, has been wonderfully consistent.
It’s that consistency that does, on occasion, bleed into a one-note sound for St. Lucia, but when it’s a sound this enjoyable, that’s less of an issue than one might think. Finely-tuned and clean, there’s rarely ever a moment for me where the noise feels ill-constructed or poorly placed, and instead, I’m much rather of the opinion that a lot of modern production could take notes of this - despite the clear layering going on here, it only ever feels cohesive.
Rating: 8.8/10
Best Tracks: Help Me Run Away; Physical; The Winds of Change; Dancing On Glass
Worst Tracks: Stay