Mope Groovesâ Joy was one of 2017âs most beautiful and necessary albums. Despite its title, it isnât exactly a cheery record, but itâs infused with a weird kind of enervated bliss, and perfectly captures the feeling of crawling out of depression, of starting to remember what light and life are like. Itâs beautiful because itâs true. Itâs necessary because it makes the violence of depression seem bearable, maybe even beatable.
In the liner notes accompanying the Portland bandâs wonderful follow-up, Vanished, Mope Grooves founder and chief songwriter Stevie Pohlman writes that her second album is more âhonestâ than Joy because it is âa load of melted doll parts I have no control over.â
Pohlmanâs artistic vision is too rowdy and expansive to corral into simple oppositions, but if Joy is a document of psychic pain, Vanished is a pissed-off and panicked vision of physical danger and obliteration. Like Joy, the new album builds stunning, swaying bridges between post-punk deities like Television, the Raincoats, and PylonÂâbut the world Pohlman writes about has become much scarier.
Itâs a night album through and through, a survey of moonlit fear. On the title track, Pohlman is a âwitness at night, [a] victim in the darkâ who promises ânot to leave a smoking crack in the graveyard.â She âgets chased by shitfaced goons and the half moon looks awayâ on âLast Seen,â while âthe weight of the night smashes my daily lifeâ on âFace to Face.â Pohlman also finds solace in the nocturnal world: âHere in the dark, whatâs left is all mine,â she sings on âSecret Life.â But those pockets of peace are bound by people who mean harm, by forces that crush.
Vanished is anything but a joyless dirge, though. Like Brian Eno in his â70s prime, Pohlman is a tinkering magician who worries at the seams of the pop form to find the quivering soft spots hiding beneath the surface. There is a looseness and sense of play in Pohlmanâs method, as if she is discovering the song with you, holding your hand as you weave through its thorns and tangles together. The world Pohlman describes might be terrifying, but at least the songs that live there are wild and free.