In the Clear
The growing, if belated, popularity of Ivy is a happy event. Over the course of a half-dozen releases, the band has married slightly trippy atmospherics to immaculate popcraft and the melancholy vocals of Paris-born Dominique Durand.In the Clear, their fifth album, finds the guitars occasionally louder (they roil and distort on the kiss-off "Clear My Head") but the mood essentially the same. It’s a romantic, cautiously hopeful one, exemplified by the disc’s closing "Feel So Free."  Special and secretive--"Tess Don’t Tell" repeatedly insists "It’s just for you, it’s not for anybody else"--In the Clearthrives on trademark Ivy contradictions and, now and then, an unexpected noise in the corners of the sound.--Rickey Wright