Album Review: Pure Bathing Culture

Moon Tides (Partisan)

By MATTHEW SINGER

Stories worth knowing. Reporting worth supporting. Willamette Week's biggest fundraiser of the year is underway. Help fund independent reporting that is free for everyone.

Give today. Keep the stories coming.

Support WW.

All there is to know about Pure Bathing Culture is contained in "Pendulum," the track that opens the duo's debut full-length. A heartthrob drum-machine pattern introduces Daniel Hindman's glistening, heavily chorused guitar, with singer-keyboardist Sarah Versprille's synth-hums and New Age-y lyrics (something about pentacles and fortune tellers and blue wood) passing through it like sunlight through swaying blinds, leading to a swooning, cloud-bursting chorus. It's one of the best Portland singles of the year, and every song that follows on Moon Tides is a variant of it, with slight tints in mood: a tad more downcast on "Twins" and "Seven to One," a bit sprightlier on "Only Lonely Lovers," a sprig more enigmatic on "Temples of the Moon." It can get repetitious, but it's like peering at the ocean at sunset: Do you really ever want the view to change?

HEAR IT: Moon Tides is out Tuesday, Aug. 20.


WWeek 2015

Willamette Week reports the stories worth knowing, from City Hall to the people and places shaping Portland.

Help keep the stories coming by supporting WW on Give!Guide.

Support WW.