- One big thing Glass Candy did was to draw links between the unschooled vocal techniques of indie rock and raw Italo disco. This EP comes from the same Portland, Oregon scene: Finesse is the duo of Glass Candy drummer Avalon Kalin and vocalist Susan Ploetz, and the Elevate EP is produced by Rafael Fauria of Miracles Club, Portland favorite Honey Owens' toe-dip into house. It has a similar relationship with early Chicago house as Glass Candy does with Italo: an indie-rooted variation that nevertheless courts the dance crowd as well.
"Elevate" makes those Glass Candy links screamingly (sorry: insinuatingly, with icy hauteur) apparent. The one-handed synth-bass plunk and bare Rhodes strings make a papery backdrop, while Ploetz's measured whisper ("My heart is overflowing") and falsetto seem to be a study in detachment. If that feels a little textbook, the B does the opposite. A cooler, in some ways more generic track in the Mr. Fingers lineage, "Believe" features Ploetz singing (seemingly free-form) around the title idea in a far-away croon, tremulous and inexact, but also convincing.
Those tracks are throwbacks; the remixes are more contemporary. Jason Kendig's "Elevate" nudges into wispier territory, concentrating on the vocal's spoken parts and building things to what seems like it's going to turn into a trance anthem—thankfully, it strips back to a hi-hat-heavy bounce anchoring a pearly keyboard lick. The C.L.A.W.S. version of "Believe" is still plenty aquatic and relaxed, but the chords swell up to command the track's center, a judicious sample of a string section warming up providing punctuation. "Find your own way," Ploetz calls to the air, but until then, immerse.
Tracklist 01. Elevate
02. Elevate (Kendig's Lifted Mix)
03. Believe
04. Believe (C.L.A.W.S. Night Mix)