Tiny Vipers - Laughter

Pitchfork 77

Laughter is a mysterious record—both a comeback for Tiny Vipers’ Jesy Fortino and a disappearing act. It marks her first major solo release since 2009’s Life on Earth, but it bears few familiar traits. On first listen, its six sprawling compositions seem to be built entirely of atmosphere: Only one piece prominently features vocals, and few approach anything that could reasonably be considered a melody. But in some ways, the album is a natural progression from its predecessor. While Life on Earth was folk music in theory—featuring little more than Fortino’s acoustic guitar and vocals—its most memorable moments were more elusive: the way her voice breaks during the coda of “Dreamer,” or the bluesy pauses between guitar licks in the ten-minute title track. Fortino’s music has always unfolded with a feeling of spontaneity; her performances felt in-the-moment, her songs like living, growing things.

In the time since Life on Earth, Fortino has slowly shifted her interests. She studied at the University of Washington to become a civil engineer, leaving her little time to focus on music. The work she did release over the last five years has reflected a streamlining of her process. In 2012, she collaborated with Grouper’s Liz Harris to form Mirrorring. Their debut record, Foreign Body, closed the gap between Fortino’s acoustic songs and the electronic work to come. “In the end, I was fighting a war,” she sang during one of its highlights, “I’d say it out loud, but my words were fighting me.” She discarded words entirely on 2015’s Ambience 3, a limited edition release that harkened back to her pre-Hands Across the Void material.

On Laughter, Fortino strips back her music even further, and it feels like a breakthrough. In “K.I.S.S.,” she sings about someone whose naivety gets broken by a cruel, careless universe. Her words, however, are impossible to discern without a lyric sheet. Fortino’s voice—once the core of her work, conveying loss and desperation with the subtlest inflections—is buried under a warped, thunderous synth. As she sings, it sounds almost like an accident, like a scratch vocal that was meant to be removed—a private incantation running parallel to the music. That raw feeling spans the record, depleting it of the lushness usually associated with ambient music. Like Fortino’s more traditional compositions, these songs demand your attention and take you to haunted, uneasy places.

Fortino plays synth with equal parts delicacy and harshness. Her guitar work was always an intimate thing: centered on as few notes as possible, occasionally striking the lower strings to create a drone beneath her fingerpicking. Here, she aims for less soothing textures. In “Living on a Curve,” a simple, low-end motif repeats as retro keyboards soar around it, scraping against each other in a strange kind of harmony. The album’s most propulsive composition is “The Summing of Moments,” a burbling mantra that comes closest to locking into a groove. But just as she begins to find stability, the music fades away, leaving just the low, lonely hum of a synth.

Laughter is built out of these dramatic changes. There’s an unsettling shift around the five-minute mark of “Crossing the River of Yourself,” as a dissonant minor chord swerves into the mix and snuffs out the gentle chimes that preceded it. It’s a moment that feels like nerves setting in, ushering in a darkness that seems inescapable, with no lantern to guide you out. In an interview about Laughter, Fortino discussed the transitional period that inspired the record: a time that found her doubting her abilities and growing unsure of her future. “Laughter came out of this awkward place of losing myself,” she explains. The record reflects that feeling, as she searches for preverbal wisdom with music that feels overwhelming, unpredictable, and immersive.