There is a quiet intensity to Nennen. Something subtle yet gut-wrenching, creeping from spaces between notes and hushed vocals. It’s arresting and fierce, and it makes sense: Amy Macdonald, the primary force behind Nennen, cut her teeth playing in Edmonton post-hardcore bands Gyre Spire and Spindle and Book of Caverns. Nennen takes the ferocity of these projects and attacks from a different angle: a slow burn, tracing a line between tension and release, between total control and complete unraveling.

Written over the span of four years in Montreal, Edmonton, and Berlin, Nennen’s debut album, Two Mountains, is a testament to distance: physical, temporal, emotional. Marked by the incidental sounds of the Mile End jam space where it was recorded by the careful ears of Tim Keen (Ought), it breathes with its surroundings.

Evoking the sonics of artists like Grouper and Christina Vantzou, Two Mountains juxtaposes sparse, repetitive tones and austere arrangements with threads of unexpected melody.

Two Mountains is a soundtrack to the navigation of shifting relationships, mapping silence where there used to be sound, coming to terms with the fact that some things cannot be understood. Macdonald captures this feeling perfectly, and with great skill has boiled it down to an album’s worth of songs that are at once threatening, vulnerable, and deeply beautiful.