The Little Desert

On their second album, not drowning, waving offered up some of their most affecting music: “The Same Heat” opens the album with a lament for landscape and loss; the minor-key melancholia of the piano in “Blackfish Creek” is properly haunted. As with 1984’s Another Pond, its predecessor, The Little Desert is split between suggestive songwriting and ambient tint; there’s something devotional going down here, too, with the cellular piano melodies of “Wilma’s Creek” hinting at the wide open spaces offered up by German outfit Popol Vuh.