By stripping away the experimentation, Sinister Grift is a reminder of one thing that’s all the time set Lennox aside: He’s an exceptionally gifted songwriter. Practically each observe on Sinister Grift feels prefer it may’ve been written at any level within the final 50 years—and even longer in the past, within the case of the strolling Everly Brothers-style lament “Anyplace However Right here.” “Reward” opens the album with a splash of reverbed snare and units out on a mushy skanking rhythm whereas sunshine-bright harmonies blast via, only a trace of minor-key cloud drifting out and in of the verse. “My coronary heart, it bends earlier than it breaks,” Lennox sings because the melody descends; Raveda responds, “Solely wanna give it to you,” bringing the melody again up. The form of their two-line name and response mimics the bend within the lyric, and because the music unfolds, Lennox’s narrator appears to develop extra resilient, at the same time as he waits for a troubled relationship to both flex again to heart or shatter fully. “I’m shifting and I’m watching the way you do,” he sings, “many times and once more,” bouncing the latter line throughout his vocal vary as if he’s not fairly certain the place he stands.
Unhappiness and remorse lurk on the edges of Sinister Grift, and so they develop because the album proceeds. Lennox’s narrators are caught up in unsure futures, making an attempt exhausting to discover a means again to a romantic connection they think is likely to be fully severed. A pedal metal guitar weeps behind the shimmering wah-wah shuffle of “50mg” as Lennox sings in regards to the stony silences that appear to be the one factor he now shares with a companion. “Engines operating, I can really feel the miles,” he sings, the prism of harmonies round him shot via with the deep blues and violets of an island sundown. As darkness overtakes the album’s sunny demeanor in “Venom’s In” and particularly “Elegy for Noah Lou,” the preparations turn out to be extra spare. The latter is the album’s most unadorned observe, a lonesome six-minute sigh of velveteen pastoral folks that Lennox sings in a creamy tone, scooping to the underside of his register in a sleek downward arc as he searches for terra firma, a dusting of reverb the one impact on his voice. It’s the type of easy, plainly lovely music a youthful Panda Bear might need admired however wouldn’t have dared to strive; its nakedness is startling.
The album’s considerably uneasy relationship to its personal lightness is a part of its appeal and central to its ethos; Lennox has by no means sounded so playful or comfortable. In “Ends Meet,” he spits the phrase “intestine” prefer it’s a watermelon seed, then takes the phrase “do” for an extended stroll, breaking his voice throughout a fluttering melody. In “50mg,” a music nearly definitely named for a THC dose sturdy sufficient to wig out a normie for per week, his voice hacky-sacks the phrases “it’s gone” backwards and forwards from left channel to proper, a chilled-out tackle the chop-chop vocal crossfades of Grim Reaper’s “Boys Latin.” He kicks off nearer “Protection” by singing the title like he’s at a soccer recreation, then palms issues over to Cindy Lee, who rips a guitar solo via the music’s center.
