Amber Arcades Blends the Darker Side and Lighter Side of Indie-pop For a Summer Time Record

Fading lines

This dutch born musician, Annelotte de Graaf, makes her debut with Fading Lines. The album is beautifully simple. The vocals are spacey and light, giving this album a glowing feeling to it. Yet the guitar riffs feel darkly retro and carry some tones of today’s harder indie-pop. This album is a marriage of the darker and lighter side indie music can often bring. It’s a must play for summer, giving off vibes of afternoons spent by the beach or long drives into the sunset. If you’re a fan of Alvvays or Widowspeak this is a girl for you.

The album opens with “Come with Me” a song that has bit of harder edge than the rest of the album, so it makes for a fitting opener. Yet the chorus of the song build’s so blissfully with the vocals and guitar that you feel amazed these two elements of the song are within the same song. It works so well in feeling and tone. The third title song on the album, “Fading lines”, is a true representation of what this album is trying to accomplish in marrying darker riffs to lighter vocals. The song ends with this leading guitar that speaks pure fun. It reminded me of how “Joke”, by Chasity Belt ends, just a slammin guitar breezing through melodic riffs. A personal favorite of mine is “Right Now”, which comes sixth on the album. The guitar has this pleasant melancholy tone to it. Which makes the light vocals stand out on this album a bit more. The song is bit more spacier than some of the other songs but it fits well within the album. Keeping in theme with lighter and darker notes, the chorus has an amazing guitar shift, with some colorful harmonies.

The album as a whole is a very impressive debut album for what it tries to accomplish. Annelotte makes a musical statement with “Fading lines” about what kind of musical elements she wants to explore and who she will be as an artist.