[dream-pop, electronic] (2025) Acopia - Blush Response [FLAC] [DarkAngie]

    Acopia – Blush Response (2025)

Review:
On their last two albums, Acopia perfected their recipe for dreamy, downtempo electronic pop. The Naarm (Melbourne) trio, made up of Kate Durman, Lachlan McGeehan, and Morgan Wright, centres around Durman’s vocals, tame whispers exuding the quiet elegance of a young Romy Madley Croft. With sorrowful, self-reproachful lyrics, the band is no stranger to melancholy; yet Acopia tempers their brooding with a deftly crafted lightness. Patiently weaving in layers of dazed reverb and raw-edged drums, Acopia produce lingering beats you can’t help but sway to, as if caught in a hypnotist’s trance. For better or worse, the contrast between Acopia’s easygoing delivery and downtrodden lyrics makes their music come off as winkingly disaffected, with closer lineage to essayist Melissa Broder’s “so sad today” than the DSM-5. “Will I ever be enough?” Durman sings on their self-titled album‘s “Be Enough,” coasting over a rippling bass-and-drum combo as chill as can be. But their third LP, Blush Response, drops the veil and lets us bear witness to each emotion–sadness, frustration, hope–without such distracting pretence. Rich with lush, shoegazey guitars, simmering basslines, and some of Durman’s most plaintive vocal stylings to date, Blush Response luxuriates in rock elements that lingered in the margins of previous Acopia albums. The record swarms with glimmering keys, crunching distortion, tiny textural details that distinguish Blush Response from the nebulous, fuzzed-out dream-pop that has become their signature. Blush Response flexes Acopia’s capacity to adorn their layered sound without coming off as consciously intricate. Suspending glimpses of strings amid echoing, choir-like synth arrangements, while adding more heft to their charac