All at Once is a misnomer; this Los Angeles-by-way-of-Bay-Area art-pop duo’s latest wouldn’t sound more skeletal if a buzzard spent a week with its corpse. Performed with a minimum of melody, harmony, and rhythm, it’s an experiment in reaching the soul of a song. Young People’s Five Sunsets in Four Days EP (released just three months ago) pursued the same end wearing more flesh, but guitarist Jeff Rosenburg departed after its recording, leaving minimalist duo Katie Eastburn and Jarrett Silberman to carry on. Guitar is thus now but a specter on most tracks. The remains are piano, tick-tock drums, bass, and Eastburn’s voice, a knife gripped by an unsteady hand. With most of its eleven songs slipping by in well under three minutes, All at Once requires multiple spins to sort out — intermittent listeners will discover something vast, while most will defeatedly file it under “avant-garde.” That’s just how these guys like it.
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