LEATHERS
Ultraviolet
Artoffact Records
While Shannon Hemmett’s tenure with Vancouver post-punk phenomenon ACTORS is concurrent with that band’s rise to prominence on the global dark music stage, her personal project LEATHERS has also existed for almost as long. Indeed, many of the dreamy, synth-driven songs on the debut LP Ultraviolet are familiar from previous single and EP releases, some going back as far as 2017. That trade-off in novelty is balanced by how well the record functions as a complete portrait of LEATHERS, and of Hemmett as a writer and performer.
While you could slot a lot of the music on Ultraviolet into synthwave (and indeed, it holds a lot of appeal for folks into the mellower side of that genre), there’s a considerable amount of dreampop and classic synthpop at play, its neon aesthetics made all the more moody for the gauzy shroud of the production provided by ACTORS bandmate Jason Corbett. A forthright cut like the title track is tempered by its sound design, the upbeat tempo smoothed out by quavering pads and snatches of guitar that flow through the track’s layers of reverb. Alternately, a mellow number like “Runaway” is given more substance by delays and echoes, the song’s echoing arrangement seeming larger than the minimal components.
Those production choices make a lot of sense in the context of Hemmett’s own cool, blissed-out vocals. The reservation in her performance is obviously suited to a cut like “Divine” where it reads as a coy, half-smile, putting over the song’s “1-900-Any-Time” hook, and for the more longing “Phantom Heart”, where her sweet and sad tone brings “Goodbye Horses” to mind. That said, Hemmett is great at sounding composed without sounding dispassionate, her quiet confidence allowing her to swing along to the electropop bounce of “Fascination” and match the playful tone of the lovely Mazzy-Star-by-way-of-Marsheaux synthpop of “Daydream Trash”.
Music the likes of LEATHERS often lives and dies by the strength of the personality behind it; all the slick studio wizardry in the world won’t matter if songs written to feel wistful and romantic don’t have some human touch to them. Hemmett’s natural charm and sincerity does the job here, making Ultraviolet the beguiling and smooth experience promised by the project’s earliest tracks.
