The shape-shifting, onetime folktronica project of Seabear's Sindri Már Sigfússon, Sin Fang embraced an artful electro-pop on 2016's Spaceland before recording the more delicate Team Dreams, collaboration with Sóley and Örvar Smárason (Múm). He returns in 2019 with a cosmic, borderline synth pop on Sad Party. Still making plenty of room for experimentation and textured detailing, much of Sad Party was born from improvisation during three weeks alone at a favorite recording studio in Reykjavík, with the studio's imminent closing due to rising rents partly inspiring the album's melancholic tone. It opens with an over-six-minute instrumental prologue, "Planet Arfth," which mixes sustained, staticky, and pulsing electronics before a spare drumbeat gives it form -- at least temporarily. Spacy, motorized timbres have the effect of being in the boiler room of a spacecraft before the drums kick back in, this time with melodic elements like broken guitar chords and keyboards. The track even gets a little funky toward the end as it seems to anticipate the more structured songs to follow. Before it reaches its hummable chorus, first song "Hollow" establishes a forlorn mood with the opening lines: "When you feel so hollow inside/It's too early, it's too bright/When the music stops/And you come crashing down/Where did it go?/Infinite sadness." Maintaining an ethereal quality throughout, the album passes through the shimmering post-punk textures of "Smother" and the marching pop of "Happiness" on its way to the twinkling, horn-infused dance grooves of closer "Constellations." Along the way, a couple more quasi-instrumentals (the intricate, percussive "Goldenboy Is Sleeping" and clanging "ClouDJuice") help make Sad Party feel like an epic half-hour exploration rather than merely an ambitious alternative-dance set. ~ Marcy Donelson, Rovi

1		Planet Arfth
2		Hollow
3		No Summer
4		Smother
5		Goldenboy Is Sleeping
6		Happiness
7		Never Who I Wanna Be
8		Cloudjuice
9		Constellation

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