Causeway are an Idaho duo, Marshall Watson and Allison Rae, who have an album out on Friday on Manchester's Sprechen label- Anywhere. Appropriately enough, Friday is Valentine's Day, and for much of the album Allison sings of the pain that that particular emotion can bring. 'My heart is an empty well', she sings on last year's single Dancing With Shadows, a single that came with multiple remixes, all worth hearing, remixes by label boss Chris Massey, Hardway Bros and Kiaki and one by Marshall himself. 'Tragedy I'm here for you/ This loneliness is meant for two'.
The album is built on the foundations of the 80s indie disco classics- New Order, The Cure, Depeche Mode, OMD- with cavernous drums, a wall of synths and pulsating sequencers, a dreamwave reawakening of being lost in dry ice on the floor. It's not totally retro- the production is sleekly 2025, there's the chug of 21st century cosmic disco hitched to the cinematic feel of club music. Opener Love Me Like Your Last Time turns all the buttons up to eleven, a sheen of synths and vocals caught under the neon and laser lights. The pain and melodrama of love is shot through the songs like writing in a stick of rock- It's Never Enough should soundtrack the final scenes of a lost 80s film, a figure in a trench coat walking away from the camera, perfect 80s noir. Criminal opens with bursts of synth noise and distant vocals, 'I'll always be a criminal baby'. The title track, Anywhere, rattles along rapidly, the drum machine firing underneath the chord changes and a squealing topline. 'Here we are/ One last time', she sings, another song, another break up, another ending. The penultimate song is Ruin Me, a crunching, industrial rhythm and hissing snare underpinning Allison's dual vocals, with a chorus begging for more pain- 'Ruin me gently/ Again and again'. Anywhere finishes with a cover of Nobody's Diary, from Yazoo's second album, 1983's You And Me Both, a single written by Alison Moyet when she was sixteen. Causeway's version updates Yazoo's synth duo pop, the multi- tracked synths and surging sequencers pumping away as Allison songs Alison, more heartbreak, more hyper- melancholy.
Anywhere is out on Valentine's Day, an album for lovers and for those who want to wallow in the pain of lost love while dancing under the neon lights. Get it on vinyl and digitally at Bandcamp.