Created under isolation, Closure is the fourth album from Brooklyn’s Vacant Lots and is Jared Artaud and Brian MacFadyen’s most fully realized work to date. Packing its eight 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 electro duo vividly gouge into the city’s immortal outsider spirit and underground cultural tropes, set against a pulsating backdrop of modern apocalypse. Their uniquely idiosyncratic path started with bonding through mutual musical obsessions in Burlington, Vermont, igniting a compellingly prolific procession of singles, EPs, collaborations, plus ‘Departure’, ‘Endless Night’ and 2020’s critically acclaimed ‘Interzone’ albums, each reflecting and documenting the increasingly surreal times they were made in. ‘Closure’ turned them looking inwards as it was forged under 2021’s punishing lockdown conditions. “During the pandemic the two of us were totally isolated in our home studios,” says Jared. “I don't think the pandemic directly influenced the songs in an obvious way, but merely amplified existing feelings of alienation and isolation. The atmosphere and pervasive uncertainty was more intense but not necessarily a key contributing factor to the songs. I was more impacted by Kobe Bryant’s tragic death than having to social distance indefinitely. Nevertheless, we found ourselves writing in a more direct and vulnerable way than ever before.” 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 like Danceteria and The World 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 and support spots. Since Vega’s 2016 death, Jared has joined Alan’s widow and longtime musical ally Liz Lamere in curating the Vega Vault of unreleased material, culminating in co-producing and mixing 2021’s lost album, ‘Mutator’. “With the people who are closest to me who have died, including Alan, you kind of learn how to live with the pain over the years, but it never fully goes away. It’s this lifelong grief but they become part of you. I think this duality of coping with loss comes through on the new album.” Disco on downers dance beats lashed with gutter-rock guitar riffs underpin the opening ‘Thank You’, with lines like “Thank you for wasting my time” and “Thank you for ****ing up my life.” A new take on Blank Generation ethos countered by startling payoff “A light has gone out of my life tonight” stolen from Theodore Roosevelt’s diary after he lost his mother and wife within hours of each other on Valentine’s Day. ‘Consolation Prize’ slashes with desolate Cramps-ish 80s guitars and icy vocals reminiscent of Iggy Pop’s The Idiot that ravages another theme of reconciling the duality of internal and external conflict that comes into play; where the struggle of ‘reaching for the stars/life is my consolation prize’ is juxtaposed against the dissolution of a relationship.” ‘Eyes Closed’ offers some solution in the redemptive power of music, its opening line, “I can you see you dancing with your eyes closed” exhaled over blistering synths. This is countered by the despair in ‘Disintegration’, driven by Moroder basslines and harboring lines like, “Our love’s disintegrating/and every fragment can’t be replaced,” plot twist “I never cared at all.” Side two’s starter ‘Obsession’ plunges to yet lower levels in the disco of despond yet wrenches its charred soul to greater heights over scabrous synths, opening line’s only overt pandemic reference with its “City chaos, empty bars/Lost in a desolate state”; blurring the lines between hard-hitting dance music and psych-punk. ‘Chase’ is an oblique love song, followed by the more directly romantic sonic dust-storm of ‘Red Desert’, named after Antonioni’s film, set against a bright electro-pop backdrop. With the record’s overriding theme of closure as a sense of resolution, ‘Burning Bridges’ makes a beautiful pay-off, where a traumatic experience has been resolved and restores the balance to move onwards. “I don’t see closure as an end but rather a beginning,” says Jared. “Sometimes you have to burn bridges to light the road ahead. Through darkness, light.”