Strange Pleasures ~ CD ~ Still Corners

Riding that insatiable kinesis over the last two years has resulted in Hughes, along with singing accomplice Tessa Murray, fashioning Strange Pleasures, a devastating sophomore album which is destined to usher Still Corners to a deserved place at dream-pop’s high table. The album was captured in Hughes’ Greenwich studio, with the protean multi-tasker handling all the instruments and penning most of the lyrics. Where its predecessor soared on sugared layers of shoegazing-infused retro-futurism, Strange Pleasures proffers a leaner, more acute extrapolation of ’80s-suffused song and studio craft, navigating a sinuous trajectory between velveteen Angelo Badalamenti noir-pop torch song sophistication, ethereal Cocteau Twins beauty and the glacial, mellifluous territory mapped by Modern English, The Cure and The Passions.