Following the success of their What If I Told You I’d Been Lying the Whole Time EP earlier in the year, featuring the sublime GQ favourite, Shelley, Lacuna continue on their ascendant arc with the brilliant Nest EP. Like Milange, whose EP Till You Drop EP I have recently reviewed there seems to be a universal acknowledgement that Lacuna are one of those bands who deserve to be huge, and the four songs here do nothing to dispel that assumption.
The EP opens with the majestic title track, a song packed with a heavy dose of lyrical mystery and intrigue, while musically the band create a sweeping cinematic soundscape that rises either immense swells and falls into quiet introspection. What a start. Sister Sister initially takes the intensity down with whispered vocals matched by the beautifully understated playing and arrangement, and while the song builds to a powerfully booming zenith, the song loses none of its unassuming elegance and charming melancholy. Masterful.
Checkerboard Man picks up the alt-folk baton and runs with it, and gives off an aura of Fleetwood Mac in the process as the song moves from alluring delicacy to wondrous three part harmonies in the chorus. I don’t know if it’s the time of year, my age or what, but once again I feel on the edge of some sort of emotional breakdown as I listen to the heart breaking pulchritude of Magpie, before it opens up into a Slowdive-esque swoonsome shoegaze musical punch to the solar plexus. Lacuna clearly have a talent for creating hugely emotional slices of beautifully textured musical equivalent of widescreen epics and long may it continue. Utterly exquisite.