Cant – Dreams Come True

(Warp)

Recorded in 10 days just a whisper away from where Grizzly Bear recorded Veckatimest, Dreams Come True is the first major foray into solo-dom by the band’s member-producer Chris Taylor. Written with George Lewis Jr AKA Twin Shadow (who last year saw his heart-squeezing debut album Forget given a release on Taylor’s Terrible Records), it’s no mere stop-gap in between Grizzly releases but an album with maturity beyond its speedy gestation.

Taylor’s considerable production smarts are showcased from the outset on ‘Too Late, Too Far’, a kaleidoscopic opener teeming with more life than Yeasayer’s laundry basket and the unsettling ‘Answer’, a track whose fascinating textures are somewhat like munching a bowl of nuts and seeds cultivated in an alien biosphere. The blissful ‘Believe’ – its sultry washes conjuring an image of Taylor posing poolside while David Hockney paints the scene – is the closest that Dreams Come True gets to the tear-stained nostalgia of Twin Shadow.

For the most part however, this is an album navigating the shifting sands of the confounding present, with all its dashed dreams, tentative hopes and head-furrowed confusion. Track-listed – as you’d imagine – to producer’s perfection, it never outstays its welcome, climaxing with the dizzying double punch of ‘Rises Silent’ and ‘Bericht’, two tracks which alone have more sonic interest and emotional resonance than a side project can reasonably hope for during its entire existence. Setting the bear free has rarely been so rewarding.