Sylvan Esso is a collaboration between vocalist Amelia Meath and electronic musician Nick Sanborn. Meath's powerful voice is front and center, unjoined by fellow harmonizers as it is in her folk group, Mountain Man. Sanborn, who plays bass in the genre-destroying Megafaun, creates intricate, pulsing grooves for Meath's voice to inhabit. Their self-titled debut?a collection of vivid addictions concerning suffering and love, darkness and deliverance?arrives as a necessary pop balm, an album stuffed with songs that don't suffer the longstanding complications of that term.