Despite being a side issue to their solo projects, this Boston/Sheffield based duo of Alice Kat and Liam Marsh (aka Kid Chameleon) appear to be getting the sort of critical acclaim from the “indiest” of the “Bandcamp” crowd that makes “acts like them’ content to keep being “acts like them.”

Thankfully, all that made the double CD, eponymous (almost) career retrospective, so special when it was released by Subjangle in March 2022 is still very much present, even if there is the feeling that love, death, dreams, and the sleep in between just feels so much ‘more’ (…and not just because it is 19 tracks in length!), considered and perfectly assembled. The higher end of the lo-fi aesthetic, if you will.

As a result, the truly stunning standouts Lens, IFSBIMY, 9 Years, and Body In Me all provide more juxtaposing female or male vocals coursed by the most delicate of incidental jangled (indie-pop) riffs.

Similarly, there is so much more of their hushed fuzz in Tired Eyes and Spin Me Out, whereas in (Pre Death) Dreams I, Lullaby, Breathe Out Dreams II, and Same Floor as they crush, crash, and caress cascading harmonies, melodies, and jangled riffs into and around each other in a manner that offers their omnipotent sense of incessant energetic beauty in abundance.

Such welcomed and wonderful uniformity is not all-encompassing here as Fine embraces their finer sense of obtuseness in this album, especially from a vocal perspective. As a result, the opening double salvo of White Noise and New Skin/Good Life, as well as Bed adds a strange sense of unhingedness to Kat’s usual washed-out emotionality, as well as a harmonic disposition between the two that is just so counter-intuitive to what they usually offer. Beautifully perverse, such tracks startle in the best possible way for those of us who really “know” their music.

Similarly, Keep My Head Up offers an almost motorik vocal interaction between the pair that darts through atypical bumbling basslines, and Forgive Me feels almost Britpop in its disinterested passion, as both tracks open new possibilities for the duo going forward.

While every other jangly indie-pop act is engulfed in the sounds of as many Sarah Records acts as possible, Fine sticks to the Fine playbook, taking the best of modern jangly indie-pop nuances and augmenting it with nothing more than “them.” A truly special act.

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