(Self-released, digital)
Cady Ternity want their art to speak for itself. In an email, the Northfield indie-rock band referenced the late, great David Lynch, who once said, “The film is the talking. The film is the thing. So you go see the film. That’s the thing. It’s the whole thing, and it’s there, and that is it.”
Cady Ternity’s latest whole thing is Chatoyance, a dense, heady record that shape-shifts and glimmers like the optical illusion to which its title refers. It refuses to be categorized beyond vague descriptors such as “experimental” or “psychedelic.” But those terms flatten the magic that Sara Primo, Benjamin Burr, James Griffin Crafts and several other collaborators summon across the album’s eight tracks.
Inspired by grief but not explicitly tied to it, Chatoyance’s songs are nonuniform, and Cady Ternity have no apparent stylistic modus operandi. Their music is complicated, well informed and unpredictable. It stitches together disparate genres and brings them to life with a Mary Poppins bag of sounds. (Indeed, this reviewer had to google “Venova,” which appears on album closer “Light House” and turns out to be a newish woodwind that looks like it came from an Imperial stormtrooper marching band.)
Yet amid the mercurialness, something reflective always emerges in the band’s tunes, either through orchestral elements that feed off and amplify each other or lyrics that cleverly vocalize the feeling the songs conjure.
Take the languid, jazz-inflected “The Complicated Type.” The song falls deeper and deeper into a trip-hop K-hole as it meanders through a “lilac night.” Soft murmurs of synth glow like bioluminescent fungi, drums fidget like critters skittering through underbrush, and manic trumpet courtesy of Justin Ward erupts like a beast roused from sleep. All the while, Primo murmurs about “spider silk” and “bathtub grottoes” full of “milk and flowers,” images that mirror the track’s luxuriant yet slightly off-kilter vibe.
Genre-hopping left and right, “Midnight Ballerinas” is a funk explosion that peaks with Burr rapping through heavy vocal fry while Primo’s airy vocals skip along in unison. “Night Blooming Jasmine” lays on hand drums, vibraslap, heavy flute and rhythmic vocal shouts for an unmistakably mambo sound. It even ends with a playful, Henry Mancini Orchestra & Chorus-style round of “ya-ya-yas.”
“I AM” is pure psychedelia. Wordless and overdriven, its hypnotic rhythm trudges under a noisy soup of guitars and synths. It’s declarative without anyone saying a thing, and it expands with confidence and authority as it progresses.
Chatoyance showcases Cady Ternity’s mammoth sound and how its ambitious creators have evolved. It drifts further away from pop than the group’s previous efforts, but its unmooring results in music just as memorable and fascinating.
Chatoyance is available at cadyternity.bandcamp.com and on major streaming services.
This article appears in November 4 • 2026.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
