The Blow have weathered the past seven years well. Khaela Maricich’s last album under that name, 2006’s Paper Television, was an off-kilter electro-pop delight, one of those records where it all comes together. YACHT’s Jona Bechtolt, who’d worked with her before, was finding his strengths as a warped laptop producer, and Maricich was crafting the type of songs that punch deep into your chest, grab ahold of your ventricles, and keep you eagerly anticipating more all this time later (witness “Parentheses”). Hell, even the guitar player on the album, scarcely mentioned in reviews at the time, has gone on to an impressive résumé: Adam Forkner, a master of meditative loops in his own right as White Rainbow, has also played in Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox’s Atlas Sound touring band.
The Blow, due out October 1 via Kanine, is the project’s first official release since a 2007 reissue set with remixes, though Maricich did hint at a possible EP a few years ago. This time she’s working with Melissa Dyne, who started performing onstage with her in 2008, and good news: “Make It Up,” the first track from the upcoming album, is just about the right mix of familiar and fresh. Maricich is still cooing clever observations about romance that hit with heartfelt force; she’s still singing over fidgety synths that aspire toward homemade Top 40 status. But the whole affair is slightly more polished. Call it wisdom: “Thought I knew what love was / Turns out I’d never seen the stuff.” All the more reason to see what the Blow make up their on self-titled album.
