Read Beatique’s interview “Fear is the Mind Killer: Inside the World of Optometry”
Lemuria, the sophomore album from Optometry, has the best closer I’ve heard in a long time, so we’re going to start this review at the end. “Never Coming Back” is in the vein of what’s considered post-punk right now. It has a running-for-your-life tempo (over 160 bpm for those of you who keep track of these things), a gloomy synth and a “Ceremony” sad guitar. It’s dark— really, it sounds like the cliff-hanger ending of a TV show— but also danceable and it’s become my favorite track on the album, which is out today on Palette Recordings.
Optometry is the L.A.-based duo of John Tejada and March Adstrum. Tejada has been pushing electronic music forward in the L.A. underground since the mid 1990s and has a massive list of credits, including collaborating with Reggie Watts (Wajatta) and Plaid and remixing The Postal Service. He has also played Berghein and Fabric, as well as festivals like Sónar and Mutek. Adstum has been releasing solo music since 2021, including last year’s stellar indie rock EP Relics From Phantoms (check out the song “View of the Valley”). She’s active in the local DIY scene and played at The Smell’s 27th anniversary event in January.
As Optometry, Tejada and Adstrum’s very different solo styles come together for a distinctive synthpop sound. There’s not a particularly pat way to describe Optometry’s music and there’s no algorithmically-friendly band comparisons you can make. RIYL music that isn’t boring, I guess.
Optometry’s 2023 debut album, After-Image, was a personal favorite and “Chameleon” has popped up in my DJ sets fairly often over the past two years. Lemuria takes a turn from the debut, in that it’s the first album that they made together in person and both musicians shared production duties equally.
Maybe the most audible difference between the two albums is that Lemuria is more eclectic in terms of its sounds and reference points. “Inside a Wire,” the album’s opening song, and “99” have a ‘90s club-pop twist— think Madonna circa Ray of Light or Kylie Minogue’s Impossible Princess era— but there’s an angst in both of those songs keeps them from sounding like throwbacks.
The album is said to be a “sci-fi musical diary,” and that’s most apparent on “Fear (Is the Mind Killer),” where the Dune reference extends from the title to the spaceship synth sounds that pepper the song.
But, really, there’s a kind of dystopian unease that runs through Lemuria, from the fuzzed-out synthpop of “Star Crossed” to the indie rock “Antidote” to the techno-tinged “Bon Voyage.”
Thematically, the album all comes together in “Unanswered,” the second-to-last song on the album, when Adstrum sings, “another step on the treadmill, another step in the same place,” a line that more or less sums up this decade, if not the first quarter of the 21st century.
Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Read her recently published work and check out her upcoming gigs or listen to the latest Beatique Mix. Follow on Instagram for more updates.
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