Ashrae Fax - Never Really Been Into It

Ashrae Fax, a North Carolina based duo (vocalist Renée Mendoza and producer/guitarist Alex Chesney) also have their own back-story of intrigue. Their debut Static Crash! was originally released back in 2003 on a limited run of spray painted CDRs. A limited cassette and vinyl release followed, but an official one inexplicably eluded them. As the years went by, word spread about the album, with it gradually gaining ‘great lost record’ status.

Enter Brooklyn indie label Mexican Summer, who dusted it down and finally gave it an official release last year to great fanfare, which in turn re-booted the band back into action. The music on Static Crash! fused goth with synth pop and new wave - it was a sound that was certainly retro back when they recorded it, and didn’t fit in among the rediscovered taste for simple indie rock at the time. It was at least five years later that these trends made a comeback, showing how visionary they were to record something that was so out of fashion at the time, which a whole decade later sounds so vital and contemporary.

Never Really Been Into It is made up of tracks they played around with after Static’s initial release but remained unfinished languishing on various cassettes. Because their sound is so specific to a certain time, you can’t place this as the album they would have released in 2006 if they’d remained an active outfit. Similarly, if it was album from a long forgotten 4AD band in 1986, you’d be equally as unsurprised.

Their Anglophile reference points make this collection immediately familiar. Mendoza switches from fragile yearning to something forthright and direct, her closest comparison being Elizabeth Fraser - with whom she shares a similar otherworldly approach to vocalisation - albeit slightly easier to decipher. Her voice tends to flit through the tracks like a piece of instrumentation, but when her vocals are less vague, you can hear the strains of Siouxsie, Kate Bush, even Annie Lennox in her 80’s androgynous prime.

Their musical influences are also enthralled by the UK. The doomy liquid basslines could be from any of the first three Cure albums, the liberal use of reverb is the epitome of shoegaze, and the rhythms have a rudimentary Darklands era Jesus and Mary Chain charm, but it’s the swooning washes of synth and warm ethereal guitar that demands most of the attention. It’s these sounds that again transport the mind back to The Cocteau Twins - indeed, the work of Robin Guthrie hangs heavy over the entire album. His ability to juxtapose both violent and feminine sounds is something that Chesney also excels in. He can also throw in the odd surprise here and there - the introduction of a wailing saxophone on “Hurricanes In A Jar” is inspired, the chord change from tentative calm to violent crashes of noise on “Dreamers Tied To Chairs” is masterful, and the fact that these songs sound like they were recorded on the cheap, but still manage to be so sonically powerful, is highly impressive.

If you’ve never really been convinced by this kind of thing, there’s probably little to sway your opinion here. However if you’re into the aforementioned acts, or newer ones such as Beach House, Tamaryn or Chromatics, you’ll find this hard to resist - it’s sugar coated heartache at its very best.