Tunes review: Tasseomancy — Anubis

Tasseomancy, Anubis.

“Break the key / light the leaves / pour the salt underneath / solid dark doesn’t leak past the doorway,” the shaky and sultry dual, duelling vocals of Sari and Romy Lightman creak. The album, Anubis, opens with the slick, shadowy opening track of the bewilderingly named “Ulalume.” Formerly casting sweet spells of musical enchantment under the spectral stage name of “Ghost Bees,” the duo have rebranded themselves as “Tasseomancy” for their debut LP, forcefully acquiring the name of both their debut EP and the age old paranormal practice of reading tea leaves.

Eschewing the cartoonish terror and black cauldron theatrics that pushed them into a corner of cliché, supernatural dramatics on their debut, their chaotic melodies now clamour for escape and soar aimlessly, no longer strangled by a rigid thematic mold.

“Bring night, sweet lord, sweet Azriel. I cry and I will these swan songs to thee” call the twins, sending their past off in the stark black elegy, “Night.” No longer squabbling about plastic wombs and intentionally terrifying us with dissonantly harmonized tales of demon birth, the twins now play off their idiosyncrasies, accentuating instead of eradicating each other’s nuances in songs like “Healthy Hands (Will Mourn You),” their crackly, gloomy voices like shadows, bending swiftly around each other and groping the track’s woozy organ lines and keeping them close to the chest.

Produced by heavy-handed creep-folk stalwart Taylor Kirk of Timber Timbre fame, the album oozes around you, slowly enveloping the room, clinging to the walls. Kirk lends his trademark swampy organ to the album as well as his diabolically sweet vocals on “The Darkness of Things.”

He skulks around, dangerously close to our heart, casting shadows over our senses as we slowly succumb to his snarling, poisoned wit. “It seems there’s a darkness of things: the moon, the sea, the early light,” he teases behind a cloud of plunking mandolin and smouldering brass.

Thematically diverse and harmonically unique, Anubis is Tasseomancy finally dropping the act and actively exploring their esoteric influences, shedding the self-indulgence and taking a step into reality.