Boardwalk – Boardwalk

Boardwalk have evoked comparisons with another LA-based male guitarist/female vocalist duo, Mazzy Star, and as their debut lazily unwinds, it’s easy to see why. Amber Q favours a Hope Sandoval-esque breathy vocal style; while Mike Edge’s languorous, reverb-heavy guitar lines have a similarly effortless simplicity to those of David Roback. Their forebears’ grounding in blues and country, however, is less evident on Boardwalk, which instead focuses on wistful rock balladry.

At its best (What’s Love, Oh Well), this approach recalls the ethereal, dreamlike textures of Julee Cruise: such moments see Boardwalk transcend the simplicity of their structures and arrangements to generate an atmosphere of genuine otherworldliness. When the confluence of melody and texture required is absent, however, Boardwalk feels less like a sublime record, and more like a merely quite good one. Nonetheless, that this duo have the ability to conjure such magic bodes well for their future releases. [Sam Wiseman]