Nearly five years on from their last transmission, Ulrika Spacek resurface from self-imposed exile with their third album, a collection of songs that function as a chance treatise of sorts for our current collective condition. In its first phase of life, Compact Trauma documented a band striving to perfect an idea while the universe around them seemed to want to shut down. And then, at an impasse and with a record halfway complete, it suddenly did. If they were a band in need of the breaks applying, it was the force of a global pandemic that made it happen. As the world stood still, Compact Trauma was filed away, unfinished and unheard by the wider world, possibly to remain that way forever. As the shutters came back up, they found themselves drawn back towards Compact Trauma. They rediscovered a record that seemed to preempt the shared grief of a global pandemic, addressing existential freak out, displacement, substance reliance and self-doubt. The fear and panic is palpable. Take ‘The Sheer Drop’: a wire-taut exercise in tension-and-release rendered in three parts, a whimsical synth opening giving way to chiming guitars before a nailbiting coda sets its controls for the heart of the sun or the end of the world, whichever comes first. The title track, addressing itself or some unknown assailant, demands they “take your hands and your head off the table”, spiralling around a breathless riff fuelled by infectious anxious energy, before shifting to a lullaby-like finale, concluding with the ominous thought, “compact trauma? Or full blown disaster? I'll be back in an hour (Or so i think)”. It’s a fitting encapsulation of a highly complex record. They could have left it alone, but in coming back to what they knew, Ulrika Spacek found their best work yet.
