Bellow

On a casual listen, there's little to differentiate Sacramento's Sister Crayon from many of their ethereal contemporaries; these ten songs are uniformly centered around Terra Lopez's soaring vocals and carefully-constructed layers of delicate keyboard washes and effects pedals. But closer attention reveals something different about Bellow that makes this quartet stand apart from the dozens of Cocteau Twins wannabes out there: the interplay between percussionist Dani Fernandez and drummer Nicholas Suhr. In a style where many bands don't have one live drummer, much less two, the inventive rhythmic crosstalk adds an earthbound solidity to songs that otherwise might be in danger of just wafting away into nothingness. Add to that Lopez's inviting voice and the alternately evanescent and propulsive melodies of songs like the immediately inviting first single "(In) Reverse," the Curtis Mayfield-goes-krautrock "Souls of Gold" and the hypnotic "Anti-Psalm" and Bellow sounds like Sister Crayon might have the potential to become the Portishead of the neo-shoegazer underground. If that's what they even want: over half of the album's finest song, the nearly eight-minute epic "Ixchel, The Lady Rainbow," features only Lopez's most enchanting vocals and a lovely solo piano part before it builds into a swirling full-band climax.