3 out of 5

Label: Murailles Music

Produced by: Ian Pellici

Powerdove began as somewhat of a solo act for Annie Lewandowski, doing a singer-songwriter thing with accompaniment. Followup Do You Burn? turned into a band, with Thomas Bonvalet adding a bit of clatter alongside John Dieterich’s guitar and bass. While that group arrangement has remained on third album Arrest, from opener When You’re Near, it’s clear that there’s an m.o. to push the dichotomy of the band – Annie’s gentle vocals and fragile love poems; Bonvalet’s outre sound experimentation – to an extreme, with the almost caustic rut of noise on this track of bells and hisses and keys veritably pausing for Annie to sing, then starting up again.

The layers are undeniably intriguing but there’s a question throughout Arrest: what is their purpose?

The album’s title comes from a quote from artist Louis Bourgeois, suggesting that the present is fleeting; you cannot arrest it. With the songs here seemingly covering the emotional cycle of love and loss, the above mentioned dichotomy and the framing of the quote seem very purposeful: Powerdove is going to make you study this moment hard by preventing Annie’s pretty sing-song from being discarded as a singer-songwriter thing: if you’re deciding to listen to Arrest, the music is restless, and quite harsh, and in moments of respite you can consider Lewandowski’s words.

Is that a good approach? It’s an artsy one. Producer Ian Pellici is great at this particular sound – turning a mostly low end-less recording into one with a ton of range, and weight, all of Bonvalet’s many instruments ringing out boastfully; Dieterich’s support doing exactly that: rather caressing the brutality, and cradling it until we wait for Annie to sing. But “artsy” music isn’t always the most listenable, and Arrest’s lyrics, while emotional, aren’t the deepest; if you’re not in the midst of a similar cycle, I don’t know how much effect they have, which then asks you to lean on the music, which is forceful and caustic by design.

It’s an interesting, and undoubtedly inspired-at-the-time album, but despite the attempt to “arrest” our present, it ends up being better appreciated with some distance.