It seems difficult to stumble upon a female post-rock listener. I’m not exactly turning over rocks on this one, but unless they all hide in one place I’ve found very few members of the fairer sex who will claim an instrumental preference. This occurred to me while listening to Aspidistrafly’s new LP. I Hold A Wish For You is the type of record where I can picture male listeners' initial thought being “I know a girl that would LOVE this” - like the first time you heard Mirah before realizing that you were listening to it all the time.
The two are similar in that each showcase the verbal equivalent of crystal clear running water; here we hear April Lee’s wandering and wistful voice standing out among an incredible array of instruments - especially when one considers that Aspidistrafly is the moniker for only two people. The other is Ricks Ang, whose impressive list of musical abilities includes the difficult task of backing up such a tender voice. The primary sound of the two is a very slow-moving and patient acoustic plucking interspersed with Lee’s beautifully fragile voice; there are minutes at a time where you hear no voice, but are instead serenaded by cooling tones of secondary string instruments and some subtle computer tinkering.
Subtle is a great description for much of the album. If you have the patience to let the album settle into you, you’ll notice over several listens how the quiet minutes are very much like the necessary back story that supports a series of brilliant action scenes in a thoughtfully storyboarded film. It’s not until fifth track “On The Summer Solstice” that the two decide to let Ms. Lee’s impressive voice out of its featherlight cage in combination with a more traditional and stunning acoustic instrumentation. The track isn’t the longest on the album, but it shows how gorgeous the two musicians can be when they aren’t busy setting the scene for the brilliance of this song with the preceding quieter tracks. The following track, “Porcelain Sky Wink,” brings a simple but stunning piano repetition over the sound of children playing - fans of the more patient Kings of Convenience songs will feel very at home with the warm melodies on tracks like this (and there are several).
It is far too easy to take music like this for granted. I almost did - as if the chance to hear a haunting mezzo-soprano from Singapore is something I should be able to give one listen to and delete with a keystroke. Not until I forced myself a second and third listen did I get past the initial reflex to categorize this as “something a girl would LOVE.” I may play this with the car windows up, but as a man I’d be remiss not to admit that tracks like album finale “Endless Dreamless” are gorgeous. Give this album a solid chance, I promise that at the very least you’d look incredible if you passed this along to a female companion with a wink - and if you’re female and reading this, I do believe you’d love this more than I, and I applaud you for being difficult to find.
-Brendan Kraft