Vanity Mirror - Super Fluff Forever [LP]

For those just tuning into their programme, Vanity Mirror is the name under which the transnational musical duo of Canadian singer-songwriter-producer Brent Randall and Los Angeles-based drummer Johnny Toomey release music. Their debut record, Puff (2023), was a masterclass in lo-fidelity rock and roll, weaving together various strands of twentieth-century pop into a variegated sonic tapestry that is both rich in melancholic longing and radiant with technicolor exuberance. The follow-up album, Super Fluff Forever, arrives over two years after the release of Puff. During that time, the band toured through Europe and California, while Randall split his time between Toronto and Monrovia, California, working on several albums in collaboration with his fiancée and honorary third member of Vanity Mirror, Madeline Doctor. For the most part, Super Fluff Forever was entirely written, performed, recorded, and mixed by Randall in Toronto and Monrovia. True to his minimalist bedroom style, he used a laptop, three microphones, a few guitars, and an old piano found on Craigslist. Following the process established on their first album, Randall would send tunes through the wires of the internet over to Toomey's Los Angeles basement, where he would lay down drums and send them back for mixdown. Additional vocals and piano overdubs were contributed by Doctor thereafter.