Signed to Toronto’s Arts & Crafts label, Bernice adheres to its imprint’s maximalist ethos without sacrificing its style. The band’s sophomore LP, Puff: In the air without a shape, swells with a contemporary, R&B-tinged ambiance that fits neatly into just about any Spotify Daily Mix while embracing the bustling soundscapes of veteran labelmates like Broken Social Scene and Los Campesinos!
It places you in the window seat of a café/bookstore hybrid, nestled in the shopping district of a city in the clouds. Soapy bubbles of synthesizer pop on the pane, vying to tear your attention away from the faint glow of your laptop screen, steam from your drink and the trebly drone of Soft Rock on the intercom. The scene’s just a little too surreal to be called cozy: this world exists on the cusp between a daydream and a nap on the table’s wood finish.
Bernice’s handiest world-building tool, its impeccable sound design, is partly honed on frontwoman Robin Dann’s fascination with ASMR — that tingly sensation triggered by mundane actions like balling up paper or having someone whisper in your ear. Her Soft Chew podcast profiles YouTubers who create videos dedicated to massaging the brain through sound.
“People are literally using sound to heal themselves of anxiety or insomnia (or) loneliness,” Dann told The Fader in June. “I think that’s what people use music for too, in a lot of ways.”
Songs like “One Garden” are teeming with sounds that worm their way into your brain’s wrinkles. Stray guitar pluckings are buffeted by watery snares, tufts of warm static and kick drums that wobble like bassy gelatin. Many tracks are populated by high-pitched flutters and pops that resemble insect chirps. Beneath all the ASMR trimmings, though, there’s quality songcraft on display. Bernice borrows ideas from a host of genres: vintage Jazz Fusion, Bon Iver’s futurist Indie Rock and, most notably, the Neo Soul sound fashioned by artists like D’Angelo and Erykah Badu.
“When friends of mine at school would show me like The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and Aaliyah, I was like, ‘I wanna learn how to sing like that,’ ” Dann told The Fader. “I would sing along and imitate them on the piano.”
Bernice’s music oozes with the joy of a song being played for the first time; it sounds greater than the sum of its parts, shivering with excitement. Or maybe that’s just the brain-tickling talking.
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This article appears in Dec 5-12, 2018.
