Bloom Review

Where Teen Dream found the sound, this one perfects the scale. Everything is larger: more guitar layers, more sustain, drums that boom, and arrangements that hold back a chorus for two minutes because they know it will land harder. Myth opens with an arpeggio that has become a signature, and the way the drums enter is one of the great small moments in their catalogue.

Lazuli sounds like a bell tower. Wild and Other People are as close to pop songs as they get. The closer, Irene, repeats one line for seven minutes and turns it into something close to a hymn, and it is the most physically overwhelming thing they have recorded. The criticism, that this is Teen Dream again with more reverb, is not wrong on paper and misses what the extra size does. Two albums this good back to back is rare. If you only take one, take this one for the ending.