Anathallo

Chicago six-piece Anathallo holds back no punches on Canopy Glow, its second full-length album. Like 2006's Floating World, the album skips between quieter moments and larger musical proclamations, as literate in pop gorgeousness as the New Pornographers are.

Guitarist/pianist Matt Joynt and Autoharp player Erica Froman are Anathallo's primary vocalists, but there are moments when the whole band comes in and sings, and the choral harmonies hit like some sort of ebullient, angelic marching band. Unlike some bands who pack on the instruments to obscure a lack of songwriting chops, Anathallo only unleashes its biggest sounds when necessary. It's tasteful overindulgence, and the entire album's united by solid lyricism and a thematic current of life and of death. "We saw the sky, swarming full with the light that the fireflies made," sings Joynt on opener "Noni's Field," "An accidental constellation/ You, how will you go?/ Out through your mouth in a sigh?"

Anathallo relies on sturdy yet inventive song structures—check the precise vocal interplay on "Interplay"—and there's an orchestral quality to much of what's happening on Canopy Glow. An obvious touchstone is Sufjan Stevens, whose lush pop arrangements find parallel on this album. Sure, he was no huge innovator when it came to overstuffed pop music, but in recent years he's been a huge factor in the acceptance of a sort of unbridled sincerity and joy in alternative pop, and that same giddy love of verdant sounds shines through with Anathallo.

—Chris Hassiotis
01.05.08