Sophe Lux - Waking the Mystics

Portland’s purveyors of pastoral pop Sophe Lux take the theatrical approach of the Fiery Furnaces and max it out. The band—led by singer/songwriter Gwynneth Haynes—aims to channel a lot of ideas through Waking the Mystics, its second album. Those ideas, though, are often of the same strain that make undergrads feel superior to their less well-read peers; Dadaism, existentialism, Nietzsche and William Blake. Regardless, the musicality of the album is captivating enough so that the seemingly-pretentious garb of the lyrics becomes irrelevant. Haynes is an enchanting vocalist, cascading into a trilling falsetto from a plaintive lounge-jazz croon without a moment’s hesitation. The songs range from bizarre indie pop to carnie soundtrack fare and plenty of things in between. The regular off-kilter instruments line up and gleefully partake in the action—accordions, harpsichords, glockenspiel, and so on. Waking the Mystics is a strange, hypnotic visitation to a land inhabited by astute literary figures, psychotic philosophers and mindless freaks; in other words, figure the band as a Paris-via-Oregon experience. [www.sophelux.com]