REVIEW: Sea Lemon’s “Stop at Nothing” EP is an Aesthetic Knockout

Okay okay. I know that none of the material on Sea Lemon’s most recent EP is necessarily groundbreaking. This is definitely a version of indie/dream-pop we’ve heard before, in all its incarnations and affectations and evolutionary developments over the last thirty or so years. But it’s just so fucking well done! Goddamn it.

I didn’t discover Natalie Lew’s solo project until I heard “Dramatic” on KEXP’s Audioasis, after which I realized I had to listen to the whole thing. And the whole thing is not only worth listening to but playing over and over and over. I cannot stop listening to this thing. It’s another clear indicator that EPs really are the superior listening format, insofar as you can cram your strongest material into a no-skips package.

Aesthetically, it’s a knockout. The weakest song here might be its first one, a dose of hopscotch called “Vaporized,” and even that is a resonant bit of nostalgia with pitch-perfect instrumental interplay. Its subsequent songs just pile onto that feeling. “Breakdown,” her collaboration with Jackson Phillips’ Oakland act Day Wave (who also helped co-write and produce the EP), soars off the speakers and boasts a emotive, droning synth line as its secret weapon. “Cellar” chimes and shudders with classic shoegaze textures, its vocal hooks and harmonies leaving vapor trails as they dive. It’s accessible music with the accessibility cranked up as high as the meter can go; I’m all ears for whatever comes next.