Actors & Actresses

The songs have layered guitars peppered with ambient sounds that help set the mood with melodic vocals. There’s hints of a shoegaze influence in some of the guitar parts and the songs are equally catchy and soothing at the same time. The music is really quite mellow overall but it’s the intricate song structures that make [Actors&Actresses] stand far above the hundreds of indie rock bands out there today...
...I was surprised by how often I reached for this record in the stack for repeated listens...
...Actors and Actresses turned out to be a wonderful discovery for the label and for myself. - The Punk Vault

Almost like ambient rock, shadowy drums press against the elegantly poetic vocals of Scott Bennett who also plays bass. The bleak strains of guitarist Andrew Schiller are often heard intensely twisting against a rigid yet fully capable drum kit masterfully executed and made entrancing by Dave Sumner...

...Huge leaps of artistic sonic undulation make Arrows as multidirectional as its title. The other side of this musically poignant release is that the songs come alive by a sort of rare instrumentation and care in handling that proves itself righteous over and over. - Chanda Jones, Short And Sweet NYC

[A&A] fill a ton of space for a trio, without ever being even remotely heavy... ...It's like huge, post-metal, but with melodic shoegaze vocals and a couple Valium after all the bong rips - slowed down, but still complex. Something that's usually "crushing" is more like "soothing," with just a few details switched around.
...Overall, it works. - Stuart Anderson, The New Scheme

Actors and Actresses
Arrows
(Mylene Sheath)
Between Mylene Sheath and Clairrecords, an audiophile who loves textural wonders in his rock has been well served the last few years. The latest case in point is this Kansas City trio that’s been kicking around a while (I have a vague recollection of an EP four years ago), but have found the perfect label to showcase their winding wares. With sheets of ghostly feedback and ambiance up the wazoo, the group straddles the line between slowcore and the most esoteric shoegaze, their boyish vocals bubbling up from beneath their textural treatises. They’re all glistening, gurgling guitars in no hurry to go anywhere, chiming, knelling, tickling, and floating in equal parts over minimal drums and bass (some of which sounds vaguely, but barely, electronic). If you’re looking for a pop song, you’ve come to the wrong place. But if you’ve come to be gently lifted aloft, levitated by cascading guitars and mysterious moods (the interestingly titled “Quiet!” alone will take you through the range of them, from hushed to cacophonous), Actors and Actresses aren’t just putting on a show of it. They’re immersed, and you will be too. - The Big Takeover