Review ·  Nootropics are cognitive enhancing drugs, some
designed specifically to enhance memory. It’s a timely name for
an album; so many indie acts nowadays are tackling notions of
nostalgia and memory, be it through sonic soundscapes or with
Tumblrs filled with hazy Instagrams. It’s the world slowly
coming to grips with a new reality where everything can be half-
remembered and happily bathed in a reverb splash. We’re led to
believe that technology is the new nootropic, yet a computer is
as fickle as a brain. It distorts, misfires, adds, and erases
with the complicity of the user. Everyone is their own curator
with powerful tools at their disposal  It’s weird to think of
Lower Dens’ Jana Hunter—a former “freak folk” bard who’s as
soft-spoken as her early music—using this sort of omnipotent
force. Yet even in her acoustic days, she refracted her own
worldview through a reel-to-reel recorder, recreating a bygone
era of folkies in her very own bedroom. On 2010’s Twin-Hand
Movement, Lower Dens’ debut, Hunter to