Phantogram Eyelid Movies LP (Clear with Yellow Swirl Vinyl)

Phantogram's music sounds like it's made by a band from the city. Electronic loops, hip-hop beats, shoegaze, soul, and pop each find its way into their songs. Unexpectedly, the band doesn't live and work in a major urban center, but rather calls the town of Saratoga Springs, NY home. Despite the cultural influence of local Skidmore College (where fellow beat-experimenters Ratatat formed) Saratoga isn't exactly teeming with fans of J. Dilla, My Bloody Valentine or Serge Gainsbourg. Using various samplers, tapes, records, synths, drums, and both percussive and stringed instruments, Josh Carter and Sarah Barthel, the duo that make up Phantogram, have allowed their natural surroundings and metropolitan influences to mix, resulting in brilliant, unusual recordings that are beautiful yet hard, dreamlike yet substantial, danceable yet smart.

Often gorgeous and never soothing, the damaged pop on Phantogram's mesmerizing debut is pure nightmare fuel. Meshing grubby synths, shimmering guitars, and fractured funk beats, upstate New Yorkers Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter suggest an '80s new-wave band gone horribly wrong, their uneasy voices ranging from muted disappointment to fearful agitation. In kinder hands, 'As Far as I Can See' might become an elegant R&B anthem, but the wistful 'All Dried Up' is straight-up desperate isolation, and the shivery 'Running From the Cops' feels just plain creepy.