So you suspect that it'll turn out that you've heard plenty of this kind of thing before, indie girl hits the scene with more 'sensitivity' than actual talent or originality, and so on - but you buy the album anyway, just in case, because the passing mentions are intriguing and besides openness is important. And at first it seems like your fears might be realised, because the album seems all wispy and pretty and insubstantial, and there don't seem to be any real melodies, so what's with that?
But you keep listening, and it begins to sink in, the airy vocals emerging, from the ornate gusts and thickets, electronic and organic, of Dave Sitek's production (relevant to mention because he's really got a sound), and not longer after, the songs themselves, first the sweeping "Joints" and "Waves" (the one coming across like a more soulful, slowed-down, 23-era Blonde Redhead cut, the other sounding like a more orchestrated Cat Power, and both in a good way), then the even slower-to-reveal-themselves pleasures of songs like "Slow Burn Treason" and "Everytime I Go To Sleep", and then the whole things, in bits and pieces but with a kind of inevitability once it's started to make sense - and it turns out that this is why you keep the 'just in case' in your armory, after all, for albums like these, that just come along and surprise and disarm you and take you into their own worlds as they do it.
