If you like Delirium, Portishead, Conjure one, you will love this.

Endless Blue draws the listener in to their soundscape with elegant ease. Each song is rich in imagery thanks to great songwriting that never resorts to the predictable or cliched. Stranger is a perfect opener for the album, conjuring up shades of Lynchian Blue Velvet as opposed to Portishead's evocation of monochrome Eraserhead. Laura's compelling and utterly convincing vocals are beautifully complemented by Nick's arrangements. Their richness never distract the listener from the essence of the songs but offer something new on each repeated listen. The final track, EB's Weimar flavoured interpretation of the standard Fever fits right in as it was meant for Smoke Through It all along. Smoke Through It is a beautifully crafted album and is an essential addition to any decent record collection.

Ever since I got this album, I can't stop listening to it. I listen to it to and from work daily. It has beautiful harmonies, powerful and meaningful lyrics, sung with deep emotion. The music is just awesome. This album deserves some sort of award. It's that good. I just can't say enough about how good it is. Buy it, you won't be disappointed.

“Smoke Through It” is the strong second release from former Minneapolis trip-hop duo Endless Blue. The group consists of singer Laura Hillman and guitar/synth/drum machine programmer Nick Mitchell. Comparisons to Portishead are inevitable, but also quite apt, although Hillman fills the role of old school jazz chanteuse much more effectively than Portishead’s Beth Gibbons ever could. Musically, Mitchell keeps the sound quite varied, managing to avoid rote, repetitive sampling that is the bane of much electronic music. He fills “Goodbye” with smooth smooth, jazz-laden bass riffs, while “The Feeling” recalls Trent Reznor’s ballads. “Undone” surprisingly combines the meaninglessly incongruous elements of country and trip-hop to great effect, and “Break” takes on a hard-hitting industrial feel, which is no surprise considering Mitchell and Hillman were members of electro-goth group STATE4. Lyrically, the band’s name pretty much says it all. This is some dark, depressing stuff. “Goodbye” is a brutal kiss-off song, in which Hillman coldly croons: “I don’t care about your pain / It’s time for you to go.” “Just Tell Me” gets suicidal with the line: “I’m so damn tired of life this way,” and “Break”, the one song in which it sounds as if the narrator might find love, pleads, “You make me want to hold you ‘til I break.” Ouch. “Smoke Through It” sounds as if it could come from a rainy, British industrial town circa 1994, but it sounds more timeless than it does dated, largely due to Hillman’s torch singeresque vocal stylings. Nowhere is this more apparent than on their updated cover of Peggy Lee’s “Fever,” which fits well in its new musical surroundings. Trip-hop was a brief fad, but anyone feeling pangs of nostalgia for the days when ever other song on Radio K was by Tricky would do well to check out this release.