Send "School of Seven Bells " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 My Bloody Valentine perfected the beautiful bludgeon on their 1991 masterpiece, Loveless, then, on that album's graceful final track, "Soon", pointed in a totally new direction. As universally revered as "Soon" has become, most shoegaze aficionados chose to ignore its suggestion that they go out and do their own thing. Sure, some good music has resulted from Loveless' legacy-- and younger generations’ fascination with 4AD's lush back catalogue. But more often than not, the faithful stuff sounds stubbornly nostalgic, even hopelessly dated. Dense melodic noise dominated School of Seven Bells' debut LP, Alpinisms. But the album also toyed with world music rhythms and Eastern mysticism that, if nothing else, stamped it as a member of Brooklyn's Class of 2008. It's a good record, but Alpinisms can sound stylistically tentative and the musical partnership of twin sisters Claudia and Alejandra Deheza and Benjamin Curtis originally smacked of a one-off.SVIIB have since toured extensively, and their road-tripping appears to have made them more focused songwriters and performers. In the last two years they've not only coalesced into a band, but a band with a distinctive signature. That the flirtatious earworm "Bye Bye Bye" on new album, Disconnect from Desire, near-quotes "Soon"'s hiccupping breakbeat seems appropriate somehow. SVIIB still work with a handful of shoegaze motifs, which they now use to highlight certain emotional states (typically turmoil and ambivalence). But it's the band's assertive pop melodies that prevail on their sophomore album....full text |
| Guardian |
| Former Secret Machine Benjamin Curtis and twin sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza produced one of 2008's most beguiling debuts with the ethereal spacepop of Alpinisms. Its successor is no less blissed-out; the Dehezas' vocals are set once again to woozy guitars and electronic haze, but the pop leanings are more pronounced, recalling Saint Etienne and Dubstar as much as they do the druggy textures of shoegaze. The best moments, such as the gleaming hooks of "Bye Bye Bye" and "ILU", take root even as they seem to drift away on the breeze....full text |
| Bbc |
| It seemed that the otherworldly brilliance of School of Seven Bells’ debut album, Alpinisms, set a standard they would find difficult to surpass. Energised with stuttering off beats and tribal rhythms, it bore an intelligence and control beyond typical debut expectations and still managed to consummate it all with a shimmering detached grace. It was an album almost four years in the making, but considering the trio’s – Secret Machines’ Benjamin Curtis with On!Air!Library!’s Alejandra and Claudia Deheza – disparate, almost haphazard collaborations, the end result, arguably, should never have been as ornate and intriguing as it turned out to be. With the band now considerably more settled, the release of Disconnect from Desire is confirmation that SVIIB’s meticulous balance between the spiritual and choral has reached a confident, polished plateau. There’s still the mesmerism of Alejandra’s voice, interlaced with heavy, honeyed harmonies and bold, complex chord structures. At times, though, her waif-like wail can’t mask the needless propensity for throwaway 80s synths on tracks like the meaningless Camarila. Coupled with a noticeably approachable mainstream sheen, and the occasional expansive thundering of Curtis’s Secret Machines days (minus the candy kitsch vocals, of course), Disconnect... heaves with all the mysticism of its predecessor but finds a heightened reliance on clean transitions between beguiling, dreamy pop and flowing shoegaze....full text |
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