Stumbleine featuring Violet Skies -‘Dissolver.’ (Monotreme)

Stumbleine’s debut album Spidderwebbed was a delicious mix of shoegazing and electronica when it appeared eighteen months ago. That was an album that was pretty easy to fall in love with. It was then announced that Stumbleine was collaborating with a singer called Violet Skies. Their first release together was this February’s 5-track EP Chasing Honeybees. That EP took a while to grow on me, but eventually it worked its charms on me.

None of the tracks from that EP appear on Dissolver, and while that means that this LP stands alone in its own right, I’ve given this several listens and somehow failed to connect with it. It’s not to say that it’s an bad record, because it isn’t, and there’s some nice enough bits like ‘Whirlpool’ which has been doing the rounds.

However, over the course of the ten tracks here, it just doesn’t make for a terribly convincing whole. Violet Skies’ voice is pleasant enough if not astonishing, and Stumbleine’s production as a whole is still pretty impressive. But when we know that Stumbleine is capable of producing something really special, it just seems to fall short.

**1/2

Dissolver is released by Monotreme on April 21.