POSTDATA

Paul Murphy, who leads POSTDATA and east coast indie rock mainstays Wintersleep, explains that sometimes being caught in a storm can be an instructive, freeing and powerful experience. Twin Flames is about a storm, but perhaps more importantly, it’s also about a fire burning through it. This same intensity is found throughout Twin Flames, but to categorize this album as pessimistic would be to miss the point entirely. Twin Flames sees Murphy creating the most intimate and timeless POSTDATA record yet, a bright, compassionate text of major-key romanticism.

This tone is realized thanks in part to both process and content. Following the success of his 2018 release, Let’s Be Wilderness, Murphy sought out Ali Chant (PJ Harvey, Perfume Genius, Algiers) for this latest album. Twin Flames was recorded and co-produced in isolation by Murphy in Halifax/K’jipuktuk and Chant in Bristol, UK. The record’s words and arrangements span an almost genreless spectrum: romantic fire-side shuffles, riotous, acid-tongued self-deprecation-rock, keys-led post-pop ballads, humming pop-rock vigor, and patient, spoken-word tenderness curl around each other from track to track. Twin Flames is coloured equally by joy and yearning: one is hardly over before the other begins, like flames that perpetually meet, split, and meet again; always connected.