Twin-Hand Movement

It’s fitting that Baltimore’s Lower Dens debuted their full-length on Gnomonsong, the label headed by Devendra Banhart and Andy Cabic of Vetiver. Dens frontwoman Jana Hunter has released solo albums with Gnomonsong, and with Lower Dens she creates a slightly different musical tableaux, albeit one that also neatly fits the “freak folk” label. The Dens music is dusty, slightly obtuse, and psychedelically colored — perfect for lazy summer mornings or the black-light haze of late night. Songs like “Blue & Silver,” “Two Cocks,” and instrumental “Holy Water” gallop along, reedy guitars and simple drum patterns recalling the early Dunedin/Flying Nun sound, while other tracks — the drifting “Tea Lights” or the creeping “Plastic & Powder”— throw surprises like a dissonant guitar weave or a sparse, opiated landscape into the mix. The downtempo, lovelorn “I Get Nervous” reeks with desire, but Dens jolt the listener out of its hazy daydream with the harder-edged but reverb-swathed “Completely Golden,” which feels a bit like Jesus & Mary Chain lite. Twin-Hand Movement is a modest triumph of texture and ambiance and pure pleasure to experience.