CAPTURED TRACKS‘ moody synth pop bunch BLOUSE have turned my head by abandoning that previously synth led sound of theirs on their new record IMPERIUM. The album is the Portland, OR band’s second, and while I couldn’t have cared about this band and their previous incarnation, I am here pleasantly surprised by the indie rock & pop, and psych & dream pop sounds spilled across the new record. Singer Charlie Hilton’s coo works far better alongside these nascent rock band arrangements, at least as far as my ears are concerned. The band winds up somewhere in between the VU & NICO and the CARDIGANS as filtered through a shoegaze haze of propulsive basslines, and an often thick mix of guitars. “No Shelter” is the early single from this go around with BLOUSE. A hazy, dream pop number I can only imagine a room full of hipsters dancing the night away to. And I wouldn’t hate them for it. I hear psychedelic BECK in here as well some UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA (whom BLOUSE member and producer Jacob Portait has also worked with). As I shuffled uneasily to hide the writing of this profile from my classic, around 50 year old female Bostonian boss, she remarked that she was really into what was playing. Not sure what that means here, but I can get into this.