Australian trio
Chase Atlantic are the kind of confident cool guys who sport '90s
Jesus Jones hair, layer giant, half-buttoned shirts over their skinny bare chests, and croon with a trebly,
Colour Me Badd lilt without the slightest indication of shame. Out of three total bandmembers, one of them pretty much just plays jazzy tenor saxophone. And yet, somehow it all works. Showcasing the talents of lead singer
Mitchel Cave, the aforementioned singer/saxophonist
Clinton Cave, and singer/guitarist
Christian Anthony,
Chase Atlantic's mix of yearning vocals, atmospheric synths, and infectious melodic hooks most closely resemble their British contemporaries
the 1975, but with a heavier, more SoundCloud rap undercurrent that's distinctly their own. It's a sound they've been honing since well before their eponymous 2017 debut, and one that comes of age on
Phases. These are songs that linger in the liminal emotional spaces between hookup sex and monogamy, between friendship and love. At the core of
Phases is the slow-jam anthem "Love Isn't Easy It's Hard," a delicious slice of early-'90s gospel-inflected R&B that sounds like
Prince run through a Snapchat filter. Anchored to an insanely catchy chorus, the song finds singer
Mitchel Cave crooning about a post-millennial relationship between friends who "fuck, but when they fall in love they're too afraid to say." Similarly rife with relationship angst, the title track is a swaggering synth ballad in which all three
Chase Atlantic bandmates take turns at the mic like an emo version of
Jodeci, each singing about their inability to make love work. Elsewhere, they sink into the bad love of "Her," a seductive downtempo track in which
Cave opines over his rich-girl hookup who takes him into the back room at Chanel so they can "smash," right after they'd "copped Balenciagas then drew on 'em." Later, he laments that he might be falling in love ("Daddy didn't give her enough, but I can make the pain better"), but he'll probably never know as he only has one day to spend with her. It's in these moments on
Phases, caught between hashtagged bluster and real-life emotional longing, that
Chase Atlantic achieve something close to transcendent.