No Album Left Behind: ML Buch Steps Into the Light on Suntub

Expected or not, ML Buch’s debut album Skinned brought the decade in with an eerie prescience. In her whorling world of sticky, artificial synths, Buch cooed about shiny things: glossed lips, a sparkling ocean and spit like ambery sap dribbling down someone’s neck. For as sensorial and bodily as Skinned is, Buch’s interest in technology is just as present, if not inextricable from how we interface with it. Her utopian perspective felt less didactic than much of the work coming out around the same time; instead of assigning value to our newfound reliance on devices, Buch positioned herself as an observant participant. The album came paired with a video of a personal endoscopy, described as a “literal way of internalizing modern technology.”

If Skinned was a hard pill to swallow, a synthesis of the primeval sinew that binds our physical form to the plastic-encased fibers that keep us connected (especially during the summer of 2020, when the album dropped), then Buch’s sophomore effort—Suntub—is like a new, wondrous being released into the world, dazzled by its simple earthly pleasures. Many, myself included, have had to learn how to enjoy their own company over the last few years, to feel at peace with solitude as a means to reinvigorate the social essence hardcoded in every human. Buch is no exception, having fled the city to live in isolation out in the country, a haven where much of the writing for the album took place. Buch’s predilection for flesh is on immediate display—“Nails pop off / Pores chatter / Here we go / With our temporary bodies,” she shouts with vigor on “Flames shards goo,” layered over the lazy patter of her guitar. Buch’s synths here feel more alive than ever, too, propulsively carting us along a scenic highway on “Somewhere” and giving way to a gleaming twilight on “High speed calm air tonight.”

While Suntub’s setting is forever changing, its static imagery (like flowers on the side of the road, glistening shorelines, an impossibly bright sun and a burning sky) are constantly referenced. Buch’s vagabond spirit recalls Joni Mitchell’s travelogue album Hejira, which was written during and after several frothy, cocaine-addled roadtrips. Buch’s own recording took place in unlikely places: in the back of a car on Danish beaches, in storage units, near a swimming pool and its adjacent sauna. Mitchell’s lyricism may be more narrativized than Buch’s more ecstatic poetry, but the sense of time and place is impressed all the same.

Buch’s compositions are often transformative, but there are echoes of more mundane interests here. Vestiges of indie rock are heard throughout, vacuum-sealed in effects but still classically written. The bongo-led “Fleshless hand” showcases Buch’s vocal range—soft but commanding and not dissimilar to what you might hear on the adult alternative station in the ‘90s. Her sleek, pristine chords recall a more wistful Andy Summers. Her voice fractures on “Well bucket,” buoyed by little more than atmospheric riffs and a simple drum pattern. The rugged, undulating reverb on “Big Sun” playfully diffuses into a vibrant tremolo before it scatters and quiets on the bleary-eyed “Solid.”

The way Buch uses her guitar is arguably the biggest evolution in her songwriting since Skinned. Though she plays with familiar sounds firmly in the alt-rock sphere, they are warped, spindly and bubbling, as if to create a tangible surface or a sharp object to slice through the stifled air Suntub is suspended in. The album’s languor feels like active resistance, a separation from the unsympathetic world Skinned materialized in. “And your body can care for another,” she whispers on “Working it out”. “You’re working it out / You’re reaching out / And I give you the hug of a sister.” The radical indolence within Suntub is also a compassionate reminder of the connective tissue binding everyone, and the setting sun we all get to enjoy every day.

Austin Jones is a writer and perfume enthusiast. His unfiltered thoughts are available for free on Twitter @belfryfire.