A solid groove can be a gateway to the sublime. When the rhythm section locks in just right, it triggers a profound physiological response: As your hips move and head bobs, cortisol levels drop, replaced with a blissful rush of dopamine. Time may start to lose its shape, marked only by the throb of a kick or tick of a hi-hat. Songs throughout the ages have spoken to the ecstasy of getting lost in music, celebrating the ways that dancing can make one’s troubles vanish and wipe the emotional slate clean.
Brijean Murphy understands this transformative power. She’s long been an in-demand live and session percussionist, bolstering the pulse of artists like Mitski, Toro y Moi, Poolside, and U.S. Girls. After years of playing for hire, Murphy realized that the freelance life was losing its sustainability. With the encouragement of friends and her partner, multi-instrumentalist and producer Doug Stuart, she began recording her own songs. Since 2018, the duo of Murphy and Stuart (operating under Murphy’s first name, à la Sade), has been making warm, lightly psychedelic dance music that weaves together bits of tropicália, Latin jazz, house, disco, and dream pop, placing emphasis on Murphy’s command of undulating rhythms. Macro, their fourth and most ambitious album, is a seductive invitation to boogie on the astral plane.
Brijean’s debut, 2018’s Walkie Talkie, was set deep in the tropics, but they’ve never stayed in one place for long. On each successive release the duo has sharpened its pop instincts, adding instruments and collaborators, and widening its scope beyond easy genre tags. Macro’s swooning arrangements bloom and bend, revealing a band comfortable with experimenting within the boundaries of a certain sound. The Vancouver bounce of “Counting Sheep” morphs into stoned lounge music with the addition of a syncopated triangle. A sound collage briefly interrupts the ’60s mod swing of “Bang Bang Boom,” setting up the swirling psych of the song’s jammy coda. They’ve maintained a mimosa-and-CBD-gummy chill that gently nods at the sun-drunk, day-glo jams Murphy’s collaborators in Poolside make, but Brijean’s work has more depth. Even at their most billowing, these songs maintain a slight edge, an understanding that it’s easier to get to a place of cathartic release when your muscles are already tense.
Twenty-five seconds into “Euphoric Avenue,” Murphy coos a sincere concern: “All I know is time moves much too fast.” Lightly picked guitar, synthesized strings, and ringing chimes run together as her words descend, leaving a vapor trail of reverb in their wake. Such a definitive, almost anxious phrase seems at odds with the pleasant instrumental fog that surrounds it, but as soon as Murphy intones the word “fast,” a waltzing bossa nova drum beat snaps to life, bongos rippling behind it. On “Breathe,” a plea for slowing down, Murphy asserts that she wants “to do more things that don’t take currency.” Her silvery voice uncurls over the lush but jittery breakbeat soundscape; the song is governed by an existential tug between ecstatic abandon and the looming dread of waking up the same as you ever were.
