Lost in the Pressure

Everything about this indietronic record (think Junior Boys, Psapp, Music A.M.) is low-key, gentle, sometimes barely there — and with three different vocalist/songwriters you might think it wouldn’t hold together. But in fact the vision of producer/writer Will Thomas holds Dive Index together with such gravity (in all senses) that it makes for one of the most coherent albums in this style. Every song circles around intense human experience observing it from all sides, and the writing is world class — especially on the songs with Isiah Gage, which hint at what Coldplay’s Chris Martin might be capable of if he kept to the personal instead of always trying to reach for the universal, grandiose gesture. This is a shadowy, mournful, but beautiful — and endlessly revisitable — dream of an album.