Miki Berenyi Trio
Tripla
Bella Union
Medically speaking, a diagnosis of “Vertigo” for Tripla seems like a stretch, although the immersive, floating track — airy and expansive, ever-evolving sonic blooms softly exploding in a time-lapsed reverie — off the Miki Berenyi Trio’s dazzling and trippy debut album is delightfully disorienting. Let’s not forget, however, that Berenyi has a history of inducing swirling, shoegaze-y episodes with her former band, Lush. Now, she just wants to groove a little and play it cool.
Taking a page from Curve’s playbook, layering wafting melodies, electronica, varied percussive textures, and nuanced guitars in more liquid, danceable, and wistful forms and washing everything in a wet, iridescent sheen, MB3 sways and whirls easily across the streaming environmental protest song “8th Deadly Sin,” the flowing “Big I Am,” and the upbeat, motorik drive of “Hurricane.” All the while, Berenyi and pals KJ “Moose” McKillop and Oliver Cherer betray their collaborative songwriting bliss and melancholic lapses in songs about toxic masculinity and letting go, becoming unmoored in love that “bites so deep/it makes our mothers weep,” and swallowing “the bitter pill” of unfulfilled desires, among other musings.
And yet, there’s also unbridled joy and acceptance, as well as resistance, as Tripla – meaning “triple” in Hungarian, in keeping with Berenyi’s heritage – turns psychedelic with the rapturous and ecstatic “Gango,” consumed by kaleidoscopic effects and ascending heavenward, and slowly sweeps its way to a soaring conclusion with the string-laden, island getaway “Ubique.” Meanwhile, the ambrosial, lazy hooks, rolling bongos, and bright horns of a tranquil and tropical “Manu” slip into the baggy pants of Happy Mondays neo-psychedelia, and “A Different Girl” glides and drifts into a lovely, dream-pop samba of glassy strum and pretty choruses. Three is a magic number.
