Marcel Winatschek

Something Bleeds Into the Music

Ladyhawke—Pip Brown, from New Zealand—had made one of the better guitar-pop records of 2008 with her self-titled debut: loud, fast, TV-bright, the kind of record that felt distilled from a thousand half-remembered songs. Black White & Blue, from her second album Anxiety, lands differently. The synths run colder, the tempo more like trudging than dancing, the title doing exactly what it says—bruised, stripped of color, something draining out. Between albums something shifted in her, and the song doesn’t explain it. It just carries the weight around.