Jenny Owen Youngs and Xian Hawkins both have impressive solo careers but combined forces to create Bell Horses. The collaboration is very much a mixture of organic and inorganic elements. Their debut album, This Loves Last Time, is filled with beautiful string arrangements weaved within electronic elements.

Each song seems to express a hint of yearning, with the vocals being strained regardless of whether Owen Youngs or Alexander Ericson, who lends his vocals, is taking the lead. This might be a stretch but it could be because the duo recorded the album long distance. In a similar fashion as The Kills, Xian and Jenny laid down tracks and then sent them back and forth to each other via email, never actually recording in the same space.

Standout tracks include "Still Life" which is the strongest in piecing together the electronic and string. We seem to be following Owen Youngs on a journey until she reaches her breaking point. "Headmess" stands out for being more delicate than the others. "Small Hours" is the most masculine of the eight songs.

It's a hard album to speak of lyrically since the words almost seem secondary. The instrumentals are so powerful they tend to drown out the voices or blend them into the instruments themselves.



Overall this is a very strong experimental collaboration. Can you dance to it? No, but it will take you outside of your element and bring you on a pleasurable, if not ghostly, world.


The album drops this October.