The Vacant Lots - Closure

Created under isolation, ‘Closure’ is the fourth album from Brooklyn duo The Vacant Lots and is Jared Artaud and Brian MacFadyen’s most fully realised work to date. Out on Fuzz Club Records, the record packs 8 minimal is maximal salvos into 23 minutes that coalesce into a stun-blast soundtrack for today’s shattered society. New York City’s artistic skyline may have changed immeasurably since the last century, yet the minimalist post-punk/synth-pop duo vividly gouge into the city’s immortal outsider spirit and underground cultural tropes, set against a pulsating backdrop of modern apocalypse.

Laced with evocatively concise and lacerating lyrics delivered detached and deadpan, ‘Closure’s spine-chilling onslaught of towering guitar shrapnel, ethereal metallic synth melodies and cold electronic turbulence comes infused with shades of New Order and Jesus And Mary Chain; the kind of modern disco and post-punk grooves that pillaged New York clubs in the 80s. Inevitably, the penetrating spirit of New York electronic trailblazers Suicide haunts the new record with its subterranean gravitational pull, having previously manifested physically when the two-piece befriended the late Alan Vega – leading to collaborations, support spots and Artaud now co-curating the ‘Vega Vault’ of unreleased material and co-producing and mixing the 2021 lost ‘Mutator’ LP.