OK, can we talk for a few minutes about Superman 2? It’s a given that superhero films from this era have an extensive amount of camp in them, so we can set aside any discussion of that from the get go. Indeed, it’s rumored that part of the reason why the producers removed original director Richard Donner during the filming was that he refused to insert more cornballery into the movie. And while it is whips that three extremely powerful super villains would initially believe that Houston is the center of all power on Earth, the fact that Superman wanted to have his abilities removed and made human is just baloney. Let’s get in on some Jor-Real Talk: Lois Lane ain’t that great. Sure, Superman was a super guy, but he went to high-school. He went to college. He’d met girls before. And Louis Lane: kind of annoying. Surely at this point in life he would have figured that out, and maybe turned his x-ray vision towards more balanced choices. And plus, doesn’t she always seem to be getting into scrapes and fixes that he (Superman, not Clark Kent) has to get her out of? I mean didn’t he see that he practically needed to be Superman just to keep her alive so they could date for a few weeks?

Oh, and also, all those extended cuts and what nots don’t really clean things up at all either. Seriously the entire premise of the movie is flawed, and the idea that somehow an ending that involves the destruction of the Fortress of Solitude is any better is just horsehockey! That place ruled, and it seemed like it has many useful crystal gizmos which surely would be helpful in later films/battles with villains/incidents with Richard Prior. However, we gotta say, we did never like the lighting in that place: too diffuse.

Cave Lights is an appropriate title for the latest Hearts of Animals record, but not in the way we expected. We thought the cave was going to be a safe place, one where an adorable fuzzy creature rested peacefully and worked on their life and music and art in a brilliance that allowed no scary shadows or creepy bad to creep. A warm cave, one of rocks and mosses hidden behind a gently rushing waterfall. What we found instead was a cave of cold ice and knife-edge angles, with a blistering chemical luminance emanating from quartz clusters of stalactites and stalagmites, spaced so infequent that sharp shadows are prevalent and full of spelunking fear. A very disconcerting Fortress of Solitude. One with vastly different lighting.

This album opens with a trio of songs that lay out plainly a stark new direction that Mlee Marie has charted for her solo project. Instead of the distinctive and signature brand of chipper lo-fi bedroom pop that characterized the Lemming Baby and 7″ recordings, she has forged out into completely new soundscapes of ambient atmospherics, often devoid of lyrics and a verse/chorus structure. Throughout the album, HOA has taken comfort in the synthstramental, pushing the updated sounds of acts like M83 closer to their heartbreaking roots in the strings pad-heavy work of Blade Runner-era Vangelis even when vocals are present.

Heartbreaking is key here. Though there was always a serving of meloncholy with HOA’s medicine, through lyric or accompaniment the overall effect was nevertheless optimistic, even hopeful. Not so in Cave Lights. In the opening third of the record especially, a broad and inescapable landscape of solitude, danger and pessimism is pressed directly into your ears and heart. The lone lyric in that trio of tracks, “maybe,” doesn’t sound very convinced. Finally, on the fourth track, “Sit Right Here”, there’s a return to the original form, with clippidy drums, a gently plucked guitar (the first to appear on the album), harmonica and vocals with the signature effects treatment of previous outings. Yet in spite of the parallels in sound, the tone of composition is more like the other recordings on Cave Lights than what has come before. This sort of aching could only be found among these recordings and is one of the album’s real highlights.

Other evolutions abound, such as the chime and synth driven melodies on “Sister Stories” and “Sad Dancing,” the soulful and emotive guest vocals by Joe Mathlete (The Mathletes) on “Versus,” or the stripped down, acoustic guitar and unaltered vocals of “Drain Me.” The album closes with an ulisted saxaphone piece, a very mournful siren call to end an album that builds its crystal palace high on a bedrock of being bummed. That so distinct a shift has taken place in Hearts of Animals sound over the past year is particularly shocking because Mlee had nailed such a distinct sound within which there seemed to be such open space for further tinkering, experimenting, refining and evolving, to say nothing for how well recieved it was by listeners. But, that’s the great thing about art, that you aren’t tied to anything and can do whatever you please, whatever you are feeling, whatever is coming from within you. See Superman, Hearts of Animals have moved on, why can’t you?

Cave Lights is available for sale at Sound Exchange.