The Kin: Rise and Fall

Music Reviews
The Kin: Rise and Fall

Australian brothers make nervy, theatrical pop

There’s something unsettling about the way the voices of these Australian brothers wrap around each other—they’re urgent and insistent, with close, uncanny harmonies and disembodied sounds that conjure chilly moonscapes and nightmarish slumbers. As disturbing as it is artful, the group’s pristine melodies—all executed with architectural precision, beckon listeners to an alien place Pink Floyd only hinted at on A Saucerful of Secrets. But it’s worth the journey because mysteries are revealed, whether it’s in the arcane language of “Photographs” or in vocals that recall a young, pensive Robert Plant on the romantic obsession of “Desert Rose.” Occupying an unexpected niche between prog and pop, The Kin resurrect power ballads with the confidence of new initiates, not even caring that the art form has long been dead.

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