A few months ago I was writing about the affecting solo album from Julia Shapiro of Chastity Belt, and, somewhat surprisingly, the band's back with an all new record already. Chastity Belt, out on Friday via Hardly Art, is another in a string of sublime releases from the group, and one which mixes patches of everyday lightheartedness with flashes of something altogether more serious. It is, as each Chastity Belt album seems to be, both a progression from what's come before, and the sort of thing that feels familiar in many welcomed ways.
"Ann's Jam" opens Chastity Belt with lots of easy charm, the silly fun of the video matched by the simple delights of what's here. However, there are other moments here, like the cello-laced "Effort", and its refrain about "leaving myself behind, again", that a listener realizes how much of what's here is a continuation of what was on that Julia Shapiro record. And if that release seemed serious, or got labelled a serious album, the purity of "It Takes Time" reminds one of how easily this band are capable of hitting at something transcendent about those moments in life that seem so challenging, or those that feel like little battles. For all the tension-and-release in those numbers, there are others here, like the lovely "Rav-4", that are as beautiful as anything from Damon & Naomi, for example. The keyboard figure in that cut, and the quiet turmoil of "Split" suggest a heaviness that Chastity Belt don't even have to spell out. That is precisely what makes this music so great, and the band so adept and underrated at conveying so much with such little affectation.
And while a sort of catharsis is reached via the final two cuts on Chastity Belt, the breakthroughs of "Drown", with its echoes of early New Order, and "Pissed Pants", with its roiling and lilting melodic pattern, are hardly shouts of release. No, what Julia Shapiro (vocals, guitar, drums), Lydia Lund (vocals, guitar), Gretchen Grimm (drums, vocals, guitar) and Annie Truscott (bass) have achieved here is a quiet record that's a unique, near-masterpiece of American indie. While the videos might seem jokey, and things overall easily uncluttered, Chastity Belt are serious in their own way, and intent on redefining what adult music is, and figuring out how to wrestle their demons through rather direct and unadorned numbers. Chastity Belt succeeds as a record that works as a journey. Serious but never once ponderous or overwrought, this is an absolutely superb album. Are you surprised at all?
Chastity Belt is out on Friday via Hardly Art.
More details via the official Chastity Belt website, or the official Facebook page.
[Photo: Beto Barkmo]