FORAGER - Even A Child Can Cover the Sun With A Finger

Some albums are magnetic. A single note, and they've already captured you. Barely a beat has passed, and it's already impossible to look away. Of course, you need the right opening track. And for the trick to last the whole record, that alone isn't enough.

Sometimes it's a matter of nailing the right sound: once you've hooked the listener's mood, with the right emotional conditions the spell tends to hold for the duration. But what if the sound and the sensations keep changing? That's where you really need class. And class is the best word to describe the music of Forager, an American band with a single album to their name before this disorienting "Even A Child Can Cover the Sun With A Finger", released in February on Ring Road, a sublabel of the Brooklyn imprint La Reserve.

The initial miracle is worked by "Your Good Time", with its pulsing, nocturnal synth laying a sumptuous carpet for the voice of Shyamala Ramakrishna, a 27-year-old of Tamil descent whose expressive range can take her from Aurora to Haim within the space of half a verse. Her center of gravity, though, sits closer to jazz and r'n'b, and it's in her most bluesy inflections, complete with microtonal twists, that her expressive palette grows most nuanced.

The rest is a constant shift in perspective: a kaleidoscopic, refined sound, with a retro grace that counterbalances indie-prog-pop swerves in the style of Magdalena Bay and pinpoint grooves somewhere between wonky and broken beat. A dazzling combination of sophisticated harmonies, timbres that rarely take the obvious route, and melodies that, in their peculiar obliqueness, lodge themselves in your head for days.

"Double Dutch" moves with a dreamy, muffled air, between crystalline, echoing guitars and plays of fullness and emptiness, with chiming harmonics and gated drums straight out of "Hounds Of Love". "Haiku Nursery Rhyme", right after, is already at the opposite end of the spectrum: imaginative and sprightly, vaguely Stereolab-like in its loopy playfulness.

A rhythmic liquefaction opens the knockout track, "Pomeranian", built on a funky, slightly wave-tinged verse that leads into the chorus's about-face — a sharp stop that slots in a chromatic rise-and-fall as surprising as it is contagious. Just as contagious — here and elsewhere — is the lyric, witty and sharp, which compares its subject to a Pomeranian dog and mocks the gentrification of behaviors even before that of places:

You’ve got the right touch of vintage

A layer of grit

But I kinda think that you’re full of shit

A touch of vintage and nothing to say

A pomeranian getting its way

So far we've mostly talked about Ramakrishna, but none of it would work without the precision and inventiveness of guitarist/bassist/keyboardist Jack Broza and drummer Colum Enrique, who move effortlessly between different registers and blend them seamlessly even within the same song.

"Autobody" surprises with a trip-hop-inflected folk sound reminiscent of Beth Orton; "Split Lip", caught between brooding alt-rock and dream-pop shimmer, rediscovers the power of a good riff — and the value of letting it evolve. Just the right amount of sparkle and video-game playfulness, "Grown Up" slides verse by verse from electronics to a slightly grunge-flavored rock, before spilling into a sunny, late-Nineties pop chorus (yes, basically we're in Garbage territory!).

It's hard to sketch the ideal listener for such an eclectic record: the best thing to do is give it a chance and see whether the magic takes hold. What's certain is that anyone who in recent years has been into the most crooked, off-kilter jazz-pop, from Knower to Hiatus Kaiyote, will find fresh food for thought here.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

11/05/2026