Lower Dens: Twin-Hand Movement

Label: Gnomonsong

Best reinvention of the year (so far) goes to Jana Hunter, who, as the first artist signed to Devendra Banhart's label, has been saddled with the "freak-folk" tag for the past half-decade or so. With her new outfit Lower Dens, though, Hunter brings her often appealingly drowsy vocals -- which had maybe taken her as far as they could on her two solo albums (plus EP and split with Banhart) -- into a coolly understated full-band context, a low-light environment that provides the slightly laconic Hunter plenty of space to hide in and emerge from. Lower Dens traffic not in folk-rock but a versatile, wounded sort of shoegaze, recalling at varying times Galaxie 500 on a late-night bender (as on "A Dog's Dick," one of at least two songs on Twin-Hand Movement named for the male anatomy) or a modern updating of a certain old Factory label aesthetic (as with the glassy guitars and rising, rousing intensity of the winning "Hospice Gates"). For Hunter's first recorded effort since 2007, Lower Dens makes for a welcome and surprising return. (M.L. Thrope)