EL LAGO, Pyramid

Sometimes, to progress, you don’t necessarily need to burn everything down and start all over again. You don’t need a full-on reinvention, but a tweaking, a subtle shift; it’s less like rebuilding something from scratch than it is like cooking a dish you’ve cooked before, and maybe the first time around you didn’t add enough salt, so this time you remember to double it, and maybe throw in some more peppers or something, too.

That’s what Pyramid, the newest release from Galveston band EL LAGO, feels like to me. It definitely holds true to the band’s sound on their previous album, 2017’s excellent Colors, with layer upon layer of sweet dreampop fuzziness enveloping everything, but there’s something a bit more to it this time, as well.

They pretty clearly telegraph the way things will go right from the start of “Citadels,” kicking in with in-your-face, stridently Sugar-ish drums and guitars that dive into the My Bloody Valentine realm of shoegaze where it’s almost painfully dissonant but not quite, pulling back at the last possible second. Then there’s Lauren Eddy’s always-stellar vocals, bringing to mind Portishead’s Beth Gibbons and art-pop icon Kate Bush in equal measure.

“Endless” moves a little bit towards the dreamy end of the spectrum, lush and fuzzed-out and gorgeous, with more of a focus on Eddy’s vocals — which, again, I can’t help but compare to Kate Bush’s, and in the best possible way — but at the same time, there’s this weird layer of menace lurking just below the surface. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but it’s unsettling all the same.

It doesn’t become apparent how much the band’s sound has truly evolved until you hit “Moths,” which takes that menace and revs it up to 11, all murky, bass-heavy, almost swampy-sounding post-punk slink. There’re elements of Quintron, weirdly, to my ears, but more than anything else, the track feels like EVOL-era Sonic Youth; as soon as I realized that, the whole thing kind of snapped into focus for me.

Title track “Pyramid” drifts back to the sound of “Citadels,” with watery-sounding guitars and feel like they come surging in like waves against the Galveston Seawall (yeah, yeah — I can’t help but think of Galveston when I hear this band, so sue me…) and a delicate, almost fragile melody line. Eddy’s vocals here are breathy and dramatic, evoking ’60s girl-group tunes as viewed through a New Wave lens. Then there’s the deliberate-sounding, slow-stepping “Solo,” which brings in some nice synths for the first time (I think?), along with a lot more of that haziness I love so damn much and what are probably Eddy’s best vocals.

Pyramid closes out with the atmospheric, ethereal “Reprise,” which is built with just keys and some quietly-plucked guitars, and…damn. It’s done, and I’m left adrift myself, wishing there was more — a lot more, in fact. Instead, I’m forced to go back to the start and cycle through the whole thing again, and to EL LAGO’s credit, it’s just as good on each subsequent listen. Wow.

(Feature photo by Daniel Jackson.)