Last year, Bernice put out their Puff EP, the latest in a lineage of experimental pop releases from the Robin Dann-led group. It landed on our Great EPs Of 2017 list, and today the Toronto project has announced that they’re following it up with a proper album, titled Puff LP: In the air without a shape.

On lead single “Glue,” Dann and her cast of collaborators — which here include the local musicians Thom Gill, Colin Fisher, Daniel Fortin, Philippe Melanson, and Felicity Williams — construct a track that’s much like its titular substance, sticky and wet and syrupy smooth. But it begins clanky and a little rigid, Dann’s aerated vocals foreshadowing the malleability that arrives later on: “Like the water you bring, we hold onto things/ Oh, but isn’t it a wonder when we can realize we walk among the living?” A little over halfway through, the track slides into full focus, a springy beat gliding into a childhood schoolyard chant: “Red and orange and yellow and blue/ I am rubber and you are glue.”

“I wrote it about the freedom of new love,” Dann explains. “The outro is co-opted from another song I co-wrote with Felicity and Thom for one of our side projects (Bliss Gloss – which is an outlet for us write the songs we’re not allowed to write in ‘real life’) and it has become such an important part of ‘Glue’ – it’s a landing pad of feelings, fruits, colours, flowers. Solid ground, finally.”

Listen below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Glue”
02 “Passenger Plane”
03 “David”
04 “One Garden”
05 “He’s The Moon”
06 “St Lucia”
07 “Boat”

Puff LP: In the air without a shape is out 5/25 via Arts & Crafts.

CREDIT: Claire Harvie