@ – Autosmile (Brown Vinyl)

@'s Autosmile is the Philadelphia duo's second album and their first release for 4AD, arriving after the 2021 debut Mind Palace Music and the more electronic 2024 EP Are You There God? It's Me, @. Across 11 songs, Victoria Rose and Stone Filipczak keep the intimate, two-headed writing process that defines the project, finishing each other's ideas while pulling psych-folk toward something stranger and more contemporary.

The useful hook here is how many tensions the record seems to hold at once. The songs draw on folk-based writing, but the arrangements lean into reverb, overlapping voices, digital and analog textures, and slow-building structures that can feel confessional one minute and elusive the next. Sources consistently describe that push and pull between darkness and wonder, acoustic directness and subtle experimentation, with the title track singled out as an extended ballad that grows from fragile arpeggios into layered refrains.

That sense of expansion also fits where @ are in their career. What began as a word-of-mouth success has turned the duo into a sought-after live act, with support dates alongside Snail Mail, Cameron Winter, and Black Country, New Road. If you already liked the debut's blend of closeness and oddness, Autosmile sounds like the point where Rose and Filipczak open the frame wider without losing the handmade feel at the center.

Reviews

• The Philly duo’s folk music radiates a special kind of energy. - Pitchfork