VANSIRE

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Vansire, the project of Minnesota musicians Josh Augustin and Sam Winemiller, crafts breezy indie pop songs that feel modest in a Midwest way yet intricate and sticky, capable of hooking themselves onto spaces and emotions without receding into the background. Since high school, coming up on 2010s chillwave and slacker rock listening to artists like Beach Fossils and Toro y Moi, their knack for melody and atmosphere has developed naturally across a catalog of beloved, self-produced and self-released albums and EPs, international tours, and genre-crossing collabs from Barrie and MUNYA to Pink Siifu and Mick Jenkins.

The duo’s latest LP, Taking Solace, is set for release on June 5th, and finds them reaching for love as a means of comfort and connection, a balm as society’s edges ever-sharpen. Toeing the line between melancholy and optimism with some of their strongest, most mature and straightforward songwriting, Vansire frame the act of taking solace as valid, positive, even political.

Taking Solace offers a markedly softer gesture toward the times following 2022’s Modern Western World, which was written from Minneapolis amidst its civil flashpoint. Augustin and Winemiller have come out of the past few years, like many of us, fatigued yet focused on their immediate universe, doing what they can for the people they love, resisting greed-fueled regimes — home and abroad, environmental and technological — with enthusiasm for life.

The opening title track, a wash of glimmering synth sampled from the closer of their last record, cleverly connects their past mindset to the present, leading into “For The Moment." The single is very much their signature, with warm, wistful keys, jangly guitar lines, and casually delivered lyrics about lucid dreams and the passage of time. Augustin calls it “a kind of metamodern tribute to people who listen to us and those who occupy a similar age range to us, taking solace in the community and expression that music can afford us, reflecting on the way our lives have changed through forces outside our control, but celebrating the ties that music can provide us."

Vansire have always been concise in their storytelling, and here they’ve mastered that potent brevity, rendering complete ideas with a minimalist pop sensibility. Somehow the 21-track album never lingers for too long, with several vignettes (including a bespoke radio bumper and a field recording of an otherworldly local public radio dispatch from Marfa, Texas) peppered between songs that mostly clock under three minutes, spanning lush AM Gold (“B-plot”), back-porch western (“The Swallow’s Cry”), smooth R&B beat music (“Inside Loop”), and more.

Vansire plays with referential transitions throughout. “80s KANGOL”, which positions a stuttering trap beat and verses from D.C. rapper WiFiGawd over a tranquil synth bed, pulls up next to the listener just before “Stopped at the Light”. The car pulls away, but the title’s refrain remains. “I was picturing someone left sitting there in a trance state, grateful for the good things in their life but feeling an anxiety regarding the idea that the best moments may have passed already,” explains Augustin.

The power of Taking Solace rests in its sincerity, a radical softness that reflects appreciation for the world that surrounds, however flawed and endangered it may be. “Atmospheric River”, recorded with Brooklyn singer-songwriter Eliza McLamb, nods to the land and cityscapes of their respective locales, Winemiller lives in the Pacific Northwest, and Augustin in New York. Locked in tender harmonies, they conjure end-times imagery inspired by the atmospheric river that hung above Portland that day. “I’ll be your mainstay when the world gets washed away,” hits sweetly above a soloing organ outro.

Plodding along a simple drum machine beat and piano keys, “Most dogs” is written from the wise vantage of Charlie, Winemiller’s family dog who recently passed away (“Every leaf will reach the end of the line…your love for me was all I ever needed”). They end the album in the “Reflection No.9”, set to jazzy sax and bass riffs, part morning commute, part closeout call for collective action (“form a line, organize…). These are days that undoubtedly require shifting perspectives to survive, be it philosophical, romantic, comedic, canine, or otherwise. Art grows with life, and over time, Vansire have learned to use theirs not only as a form of expression but relief.