Recorded in a pre-WWII Berlin bunker complete with chandeliers and red velvet furnishings, Poe’s third album features ripened love songs marinated in raw ache and longing. With sparse but telling bass and drum accompaniment, the largely first-take recordings include previously released gems (“Moon” and “Reunion”) alongside new beauties, including the majestic loaded metaphor “You’re The Bomb” and the anguished nerve-end-shredder “Settlement”. Poe can capture dream/nightmare atmospheres within sweetly turned melodic pop songs, so well does he inhabit a unique area somewhere between Kurt Cobain’s acoustic scowl and Joe Henry’s jazzy reveries.
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