TOPS w/ Riki

TOPS
TOPS — musicians David Carriere, Jane Penny, Marta Cikojevic, and Riley Fleck — write timeless music that reliably threads immediacy and depth. Bury the Key, their first full-length since 2020 and with new label home Ghostly International, is a captivating reintroduction for the Montréal band: ever refined, undoubtedly masters of their melodic craft yet unafraid of evolving and testing themselves against different, at times darker tones. The album faces feelings once locked away, engaging the give-and-take between happiness, hedonism, and self-destruction. While often inhabited by fictional figures, their glowing, grooving, self-produced songs draw from personal observations: intimacy (both inside and outside the band), toxic behavior, drug use, and apocalyptic dread. When recording started, they noticed a shift and leaned in, jokingly dubbed “evil TOPS,” says Penny. “We’re always kind of seen as a soft band or like naive or friendly in a Canadian way, but we made it a challenge to really channel the world around us.” Through the lens of a looming epoch and the clarity that comes with age, TOPS dip into a more sinister disco realm with Bury the Key, giving their soft-focus sophisti-pop a sharpened edge.

RIKI
Riki is the Los Angeles based dark synth-pop outfit commandeered by the mysterious Niff Nawor, a visual artist and musician active in the deathrock / anarcho-punk scenes of the California bay area (formerly a member of Crimson Scarlet), before founding her solo endeavor as Riki in 2017.

Riki returns with her 2nd simulacrum of pitch-perfect synth-pop, aptly titled for the precious substance it is: Gold. Inspired by notions of symbolic power, letting go, and transmutable realms of the heart, the album further refines her rare gift for making swooning melancholia as anthemic as it atmospheric. Working with Telefon Tel Aviv co-founder Josh Eustis at his Pasadena studio, the sessions unfolded fluidly and fruitfully, focusing on “quieter moments” and refining the record’s palette and voice. Occasional interruption from a nearby flock of wild parrots infused a mood of California dreaming, purple sunsets dissolving into deepening neon night.

Like all the most elusive pop, Riki’s songcraft is simultaneously direct and oblique, dynamic and detached, shifting from sparkling chorus to elliptical outro according to its own poetic logic. She characterizes her lyrical muse as “very much what’s going on in my life, things I wanted to say but didn’t have the platform.” This subcurrent of dream fulfillment animates the melodies with a specificity and immediacy that transcends her pantheon of 80’s influences: from Saâda Bonaire and Strawberry Switchblade to Bryan Ferry, Bananarama, and beyond. Gold skews less dance floor than her instant classic 2020 debut but taken as a collection it’s equally stirring, stylish, and exquisitely produced. Evocatively layered arrangements of drum machinery, sequencer, fretless bass, grey sky guitar, saxophone, and FX, anchored by Riki’s singular voice, alternately widescreen and wounded, yearning beyond time for ecstasies both fleeting and forever: “Thought I knew you, but you’ve gone far away / it’s not in your nature to stay / but the thought that I need you, grows stronger every day / the colors begin / to change.”