As Avalon Emerson continues fusing her DJ kicks with dreamy guitar-pop kisses with The Charm, it’s becoming more and more evident that this realm is one being sculpted to her own unique likings throughout her second album with the band, Written Into Changes. This is an insight which could only come from someone who over the last decade-plus made a name for herself honing her experimental electronic craft in front of dance-centric audiences at Berghain and Coachella and understands the movement of the body through sound.

She now commands it through a worship of sapphic romance electrically-charged by rippling guitars and cool breakbeats, with album opener “Eden” and the subsequent “Jupiter and Mars” keeping heart palpitations aflutter. There’s something especially to be said, however, in Emerson’s flair for finessing her polymathic multitudes. Varying interpretations of French and Italo-inspired dance-pop gives her own morbid POV on a “Happy Birthday” a soft glow while exhilarating an escapist energy on “Country Mouse”.

With it, she separates her synth-driven spell sound from the rest of the melodic milquetoast of a lot of today’s indie-pop with ease. These are the kind of Changes that are not only more than welcome in this world, but necessary in carving out your own evolution.

Highlights: “Jupiter and Mars”, “Happy Birthday”, “Country Mouse”

Avalon Emerson & the Charm’s Written Into Changes is available now on Dead Oceans.

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