Absolutely Yours ascend on Mirror Maze
"Mirror Maze"
Do you ever come across albums where the brilliance of the opening track stops you moving on with the rest? So instead, you press repeat and indulge in just another few more delicious minutes of bliss.
Well, Mirror Maze gives me that ‘problem’ because it announces its arrival with the gossamer gorgeousness of “Walked in the Garden”. A latticework of hazy guitars supports a quietly devastating song that pleads for feeling, whether good or bad.
I almost didn’t want to find out if it was some kind of cruel fluke, but no; Absolutely Yours then maintains the pastoral theme and casually launches the even better “Field of Nothing” into the ether and you quickly realise lightning may be striking more than once on Mirror Maze.
Slightly unusually for music in a shoegaze/dreampop vein, Bridget Collins’ lyrics rise above the ‘pretty but insubstantial’ trap by being as evocative as the surrounding music. Try this from “Field of Nothing”: “I felt so close to something I can’t capture, waiting on a new disaster, I tried so hard to hide it but it shows, I feel like a field of nothing, a haunted house at summer’s dawning.”
She’s even happy to poke gentle fun at “maudlin poetry,” adding humour where you may not expect it. At times there a sense that these songs may be an attempt to exorcise an anxiety that weaves its way in and out of Mirror Maze, there’s also a strong sense of using nature and the outdoors as an antidote to modern ennui, either that or an escape into music and books. “The Comet” (also present in a spellbinding acoustic take) even goes as far as to echo Nick Drake with a character who’s more comfortable with, “books or records”.
On “I Didn’t”, Bridget’s hushed and intimate vocals are used to draw us into a tale of long-distance infidelity via a song that makes me think of driving down a dark empty road with only the white lines for company. Musically nothing is overdone. Instead the band knows when to hold back and when to add colour and forward motion. Tempos are varied and there are plenty of subtle hooks to draw you in and keep you coming back.
Forming in Brooklyn but now transplanted to Minneapolis, Absolutely Yours released a streaming version of Mirror Maze in 2024. But these tracks are too good not to find their way to CD in expanded form. As we’re playing catch-up, the great news is that a new album, Desire Path, should be ready before we slide into 2026. But back in the here and now, Mirror Maze is a place where you can happily lose yourself.
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