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Anni Rossi “Candyland”

Anni Rossi has been a strange artist to watch develop over the past few years. She started off violently slashing at her viola and singing in a wildly expressive style punctuated with wordless, orgasmic bleats. Then she rerecorded her material, toning down her quirks and dialing down her manic energy. Now she’s mellowed out even further, to the point that she hardly sounds like the young woman who made the Afton EP. The songs on her new album Heavy Meadow are rigid and minimal, with melodies that seem to connect between tightly snapping beats like taut, thin wires. Her early material seemed totally unhinged, but this is all about deliberate restraint. “Candyland,” the opening track set the tone — light but uptight, sweet but aloof. She comes close to the glassy-eyed bliss of Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody),” but Rossi still has too much fire in her to seem that disassociated and blank.

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