Description
This record begins with a mistuned two-note guitar stumble, the kind of opaque petulance you find on a Shadow Ring record. Within a full breath it’s joined by a ringing bell of a voice, a confident, weighted delivery that seems to tighten the errant guitar into clarity. Notes ring, a honeyed bass line joins in next. Every song on ‘The Code’ has this kind of natural, unexpected pathway. Like climbing a wooded hill, unsure of the goal but suddenly turning to see a whole continent below you. Or a time-lapse film of a barn raising, the beams and nails all visible but somehow the line from the bare patch of land to the completed building gets lost in the wonder of the movement. I asked Sophie Weil, the visionary behind Syko Friend, about these paths. She told me about her background in the midwest noise scene, about writing and unwriting songs, about her admiration for Cynthia Dall. Which all made sense, but every time I play the record I end up lost and surprised the same way I felt the first time hearing it, which is, in many ways, the very best thing that music can do.
Released by Post Present Medium in 2022. Color cover, lyric insert.
