It never seemed as though the future was promised for Ulrika Spacek and their third album, Compact Trauma. The band started work on the album way back in 2018 shortly after the release of Modern English Decorations in a state of exhaustion. Their initial sessions began at the London based artist loft and studio that had been the headquarters and literal home was sold away as gentrification moved through the neighborhood and the things got progressively more uncertain. Displaced and spiritually fractured, hey moved the sessions to a proper recording studio, made half a record, and then shelved it. They were stalled but then a year or so later, so was the world. The pandemic and the inherent isolation that came with gave the quintet a chance to slow down, to reflect, to revisit what they had both written and recorded. Already deep into personal trauma that were tearing their framework apart, the global trauma in a strange way brought a new interest in finishing their record, and the band reconvened to finish the dazzling album, a personal record with a universal relatability.
Ulrika Spacek’s music, while easily digestible and friendly enough in the sonic sense, is never really reliant on pop. There are hooks, but they come with complexities. The songs are undeniably engaging, but require multiple listens to unpack. There’s an astute sense of purpose in their progressions and layering, but the band generally prefer fascinating expanse over the direct. While mainstream indie tends to favor the boring, the predictable, and the safe, Ulrika Spacek are making music for the rest of us, those who prefer dynamics, moments of intricate bliss, and a band that makes ambitious music by taking interesting routes to arrive from point a to point b.
Best experienced in full, Compact Trauma is an evolution for the band, warping and weaving through loungy psych and fragmented art rock to create something glowing and evergreen. It’s an album detailed in inner struggle, fighting demons of self-doubt and addiction, wrestling with defeatist mentalist issues and finding its place in the world. Ulrika Spacek rarely take the straight forward route, everything is delivered into an esoteric shimmer, the pieces laid into place with a nervy complexity. The thread linking it all together is the album’s majestic charm and whirring warmth. There’s plenty to take in, and in time, the album opens itself up, each new layer finding its home, its essential place in the structure of the record as a singular vision.
The London based quintet experiment with genre, blending psych pop melodies into propulsive motorik forms, fever dream evolutions of noise pop and the fuzzier edges of post-punk. Their influences are recognizable, but Ulrika Spacek travel their own celestial path, tangling themselves into unique progressions, getting jazzy (“Lounge Angst”) while reshaping the relationship between beauty and dissonance (“Compact Trauma”). Songs ring and chime in open spaces, colliding headfirst into climatic anti-hooks (“The Sheer Drop”) and swirling shoegaze adjacent density. It’s all played impeccably tight, and the band manipulate extended run times (“Stuck At The Door”) to dive into cosmic instrumentals, wrenching between tension and eventual release. Where they go next we can’t guess, but we’re grateful for the commitment to Compact Trauma.