Sylvan Esso

“I try to write songs that people haven’t written before,” Sylvan Esso’s Amelia Meath told The New York Times in the spring of 2017. She was talking specifically about “Die Young,” a surging love song that cannily used the idea of skirting death as the best evidence available for commitment. But that idea has been a consistent credo for Meath and electronics maven Nick Sanborn since they started Sylvan Esso nearly two decades ago, soon after she asked him to remix a track by her stunning folk trio Mountain Man. On their first four albums, the progressive and ever-adventurous pop duo turned nursery rhymes and childhood games and old soul hits into songs against sexism and for romance, then used snippets of diegetic sound as interludes that emphasized the strength and charm of the tunes that followed. Sylvan Esso has written alternative pop hits about capitalistic cruelty and environmental degradation, all bathed in electronic textures that feel homemade.

They’ve never perfected their precarious balance of the accessible and the experimental, the topical and the danceable quite like they have on Ow ∞, their astounding fifth album. Its 12 songs are intricately textured and structurally sophisticated, from the way static and luminous drones move over and around Meath’s voice on “Plastic Sword” to the way the steady drums empty into a Sigur Rós sample during “Concrete Glen.” Meath wrestles with the weight of universal despair, excoriates disposable culture, and revels in the little joys of friendship hangs and a snuck cigarette. She and Sanborn splinter a hocket into dizzying bits during “Ribbon” and use radio samples and static as a perfect pop springboard during “Sledge.” Ow ∞ is a new apogee for the duo, a batch of truly fascinating songs that had never before been written.