thredd’s debut record It’s Lovely, Come On In is short at just 22 minutes, but in that time the trio conjure an icy, stylish, and cinematic world that lingers far beyond the runtime. With stark drum programming, cold synths, and noir-tinged textures, the album holds the moodiness of The xx or Portishead but with far more physical club weight.

The bass looms, murky and heavy with a sound designed for both headphone listening and midnight dancefloors, recalling Death In Vegas and UNKLE in its sleek menace with a tension between the cold and the human running throughout. With an interplay of male and female voices set against a skeletal drum machine, We Don’t Speak Anymore is minimal yet emotionally loaded. Party is the album’s left turn and standout moment, as what first sounds like a sultry, seductive number about secrets reveals itself as a strange political game, promising clean roads and simple solutions in an alluring voice, both funny and unnerving. Elsewhere, the band keeps surprising with textural shifts, such as a minute-long vignette of piano and pitch-shifted vocals. Even the small songs have tremendous character. Funny Girl builds from a tender piano ballad into something stranger, as a sighing vocal sample becomes part of the rhythm track in a sort of ghost-pop experiment. Closer Vimeo drifts back into icy territory, all detuned synths and shadows, fading the record out like a cigarette smouldering in the dark, and what ties It’s Lovely, Come On In together throughout is the restraint. Instead of trying to fill every space, thredd allow each synth wash, piano chord, and vocal line to hang in the room with a spacious, cinematic quality, and a constant tension between intimacy and detachment, warmth and chill. thredd have proven they can move between the sultry, the political, the icy, and the heartfelt with a short record that definitely leaves you wanting more, but establishes a fully formed aesthetic from the start that’s both stylish and haunting.