Dylan and Cole dance into an ethereal fever dream on ‘The Staircase’: waves of abandonment and isolation swirling about in impressionist images and mist-light pop. “Tangled up / with incessant feeling,” Sharpie Smile wear their heart on the outside, as big thoughts crowd their insides. Reflecting, Dylan and Cole share: “‘The Staircase’ is about trying to reconnect with a fractured self — losing sight of oneself while maintaining relationships that aren’t working anymore, and the process of rediscovery after the fact.” The music video, by Dante Capone, switches up between a lush forest setting and a lavish palace interior.

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Sharpie Smile is Dylan Hadley and Cole Berliner. They met in 2015, a pair of musically-adept nonconformist teenagers that started writing music together for a project called Kamikaze Palm Tree. With Dylan on drums and Cole on guitar, they produced two albums of thorny, ear-wormy art rock, touring the country and fitting in session work for Cate Le Bon, A. Savage, and Tim Presley’s White Fence. Then, a shimmering new direction came into view.

The Staircase is a lush and energising contemporary pop record built on heart-swelling minimal/maximal electronic production and deep feels. Dylan and Cole summon inspired waves of dreamy futurist sounds, taking notes from the likes of SOPHIE, 100 gecs, and Oklou. Finding something new is losing something else; there’s the shadow of ‘goodbye’ here, too. The way Dylan sings “There is nothing I won’t miss” on the pre-release single, ‘Love or Worship,’ we feel broken up — but if the breakup is with the old way of life, then getting over the hump will provide its own sweet reward. Sharpie Smile’s passage is one of sensuous breaths and serpentine soul-terrain, as Dylan’s blue vocal melodies drift glacially through a luminous wilderness of synth keys, guitars and percussion beats.

Abrupt and minimal, new single ‘The Slide’ goes hard. Light on its feet and playful, hard autotune dances over harsh bass and sucks you in. The music video (by Isabella Behravan) captures Dylan and Cole in a midnight harbor, where Dylan’s echoes — “Just reach down to me now / Just let go” — drop you into a rippling, shimmery bridge with slinky guitars that feel like an arrival. It stands out as a track to bridge the record together, and solidifies its final form as a modern pop endeavour.

The Staircase:

1. Bells
2. Disappears
3. The Slide
4. Answer
5. Love or Worship
6. So Far (Feat. Leng Bian)
7. Brick or Stone
8. New Flavor
9. The Letter
10. The Staircase

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