Annie Barker & Pieter Nooten: Glitter and Gears
Annie Barker & Pieter Nooten

Weighty topics such as climate catastrophe and American politics are addressed on Glitter and Gears, but the first thing you'll likely fixate on is the alluring sonic blend crafted by singer/lyricist Annie Barker and instrumentalist Pieter Nooten. Four tracks deftly merging dreampop and neoclassical compose the twenty-six-minute EP, whose appeal is bolstered by a stand-alone remix by none other than bvdub (aka Brock Van Wey). Barker's first-person lyrics give the material an intimate, sometimes stream-of-consciousness-like feel that also enhances listener engagement. The two releases leave a powerful cumulative impression.

The opening “Saudade,” which tells of the desire for new beginnings with all the hope and uncertainty that entails, combines gorgeous crooning with a dense backdrop of guitars, synths, and drums. We're not far removed from Cocteau Twins territory, especially when Barker's delivery spans octaves in a manner not unlike Elizabeth Fraser's. The words' focus on liberation finds its counterpart in the music's ecstasy-inducing character, as the two components operate together to bedazzle. Humanity's desecration of the natural world gives “She Will Go On” a wistful tone, though the message is clear: the world will survive, whether we're around to see it or not. If the tone is a tad less ecstatic than the opener, the production design is as epic and the singing as enrapturing.

Barker's trippy musings in “Happy and Sad” suggest the extremes of emotion a lover experiences in the initial heady stages of a relationship, her vocal abandon here again inviting a Cocteau Twins reference. The two initially strip the arrangement down for the stately ballad “Savior,” the move allowing the lustrous vocal to be heard alongside a less frenetic backing. Gradually, however, the arrangement expands in detail and scope until we find ourselves one final time in dreampop territory. Though the two emphasize their music's roots in dreampop and neoclassical, it's the former that nevertheless dominates on this release.

Issued a month after the EP as a separate single-track release, Van Wey's “Black Sun on a Salt Sea” treatment recasts “Happy and Sad” as a sixteen-minute journey that'll no doubt satisfy bvdub devotees. Reverberant strings and acoustic guitar get things underway, with the production design even more widescreen than the EP tracks and Barker's wordless layers drifting gracefully across a piano-dotted haze. The impression created is of a swirling ocean of sound, with different elements surfacing along the way and all used to reinforce the impression of a towering construction. The climax the material eventually works its way up to is, in a word, awesome.

December 2020