FADER PREMIERE:
I had never heard of British Columbia artist White Poppy until this summer, and happening upon Crystal Dorval's so-called "experimental therapeutic pop" project felt special and rare, like unearthing a fully formed world unto itself. There are plenty of loop-based, lo-fi guitar/synths/vocals projects around, but true distinctiveness is less about the tools you have than the way that you put them to use, and White Poppy's debut record feels at once so ethereal and deep that you hardly register the instrumentation at all, just the way all the melodies and sounds sort of bleed into one another, like oil pastels. It's a genuinely warming experience throughout, with the kind of unexpected emotional fissures that always seems to slide at you from a sideways direction, be it in the form of biting, overdriven guitar sound, detuned piano chords or the strong and enveloping beauty of Dorval's own voice. Stream the album in full below, or grab a copy from Not Not Fun when it comes out on September 3rd .
