Pretty/Ugly

Laurel Halo is an artist gifted as noisemaker and singer-songwriter. She’s been compared to Grimes and James Blake for setting pop melody against experimental electronics, but dare I say she’s sharper than either.

More fitting comparisons are to Laurie Anderson, who was never afraid of making her pretty voice ugly and her ugly music pretty, and to sometimes-collaborator Daniel Lopatin, who builds scrap-sample universes as Oneohtrix Point Never.

Touchstones aside, Halo stands above her influences and contemporaries as a visionary sound sculptor and songwriter. “Quarantine,” like its cover, cuts through its pretty surface to reveal the gushing and ugly heart that propels it.

Standout “Thaw” opens with anxious screeching before a warm melody and Halo’s flat voice wash over the mix, offering the Panda Bear-like proverb “Don’t get addicted to anything/Just keep walking/One foot in front of the other/Forward motion’s the only answer.”

Elsewhere, her vocals are stretched to their limit and folded over to make their own noise. Closer “Light + Space” oozes dreamily into your subconscious and sticks in your head.

The result is a cinematic slice of synth- and sample-based noise, riven with acute pop sensibility and demanding of your attention. “Quarantine” is the summer’s first great album.

By Patrick Beane