Hard-to-Google duo @’s second album casts an enticing spell

It’s quite a technically accurate description for Autosmile, however. Depending on where the needle is dropped, Philadelphia-based duo @ (pronounced "at", obviously, and nearly impossible to search for) not infrequently sound like an indie-rock outfit who have become evangelical about the sparse directness of folk, or an earthy psych-folk duo healthily curious about rock band dynamics. As such, Victoria Rose and Stone Filipczak operate in a fairly crowded market, but the uniquely pitched songwriting of the two multi-instrumentalists helps set their work apart. Even when the themes and topics lean towards the over-familiar (breakups, longing, feeling down, other assorted matters of the heart), @ can’t help but mix up the deck with unexpected and often enticing references to demons, haunted thoughts, otherworldly goings-on and such. Considering how intuitively and seamlessly the voices of the two songwriters intertwine and curl around each other into heavenly and warm close harmonies – and Autosmile truly breaks into full bloom whenever those harmonies kick in – it’s surprising that Rose and Filipczak recorded their compositions separately. The duo later adorned these basic recording...