“My Sweet Valentine” is an understated though heartfelt success from Abstain From Fastening a Brain, capturing the project’s experimental chamber-pop sound with dreamy allure. The track evolves blissfully from smitten, dream-like recollections into the mid-point’s expressiveness and vocal harmonies. Bass clarinet and English horn provide lovely, melodic flourishes into the organ-touched mid-point, as the vocals admit “I don’t know how to swim.” Accounts of personal tumult, and a seeming lack of wins, exudes a lamenting quality that coexists wonderfully with the chamber-pop production.
It marks another success from the project of Brian Charles Nixon and Stefan Merkel, which also caught our ears with the track “Emit such Light” in May.
