Smerz keep Easy EP loose, diaristic and quietly strange

Smerz’s Easy EP is one of the sharpest smaller releases from the 15 May wave and a strong 17 May weekend pick for experimental pop and indie-electronic listeners. The Norwegian duo, Catharina Stoltenberg and Henriette Motzfeldt, have always made music that feels half-club, half-private message.

Their songs often sound like they are drifting out of a room next door: intimate vocals, strange production choices, small rhythmic disruptions and a feeling of emotional distance that somehow becomes more personal because of the restraint. Easy EP follows the more defined world of Big City Life and seems to loosen the process. The track titles, including Somewhere, Spring Summer, Its Here and The Room You Described, suggest sketches, versions and emotional fragments rather than a single linear statement. That is what makes Smerz compelling. They rarely over-explain the feeling. They let the sound hang there, slightly unresolved, as if the listener has walked in halfway through a conversation. For a 17 May digest, Easy EP gives the weekend something subtle and modern: not a grand album, not a radio-pop single, but a small object that captures mood, boredom, desire and memory in the same synthetic breath. Source: https://pitchfork.com/news/15-new-albums-you-should-listen-to-now-kevin-morby-drake-smerz-and-more