With their second album, the husband-and-wife duo Houses don't just create more sophisticated songs; they also have a more innovative approach to recording. While relocating from Chicago to Los Angeles, Megan Messina and Dexter Tortoriello visited abandoned homes, taking field recordings of the open ambience or sampling and looping percussive sounds played from the old foundations. This mining of beauty from decay gives A Quiet Darkness its aural magic, starting with the gorgeously mournful opener “Beginnings.” Messina and Tortoriello’s harmonies here recall those of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker from Low. In “The Beauty Surrounds,” various rhythm parts are provided by close-up sonic textures of what sounds like a broom sweeping a wooden floor, the clicking of light switches, and a dripping faucet. But it’s the yearning melodies and lovelorn lyrics that give the tune a pulsing human life as they slow-dance over the song’s organic kinetics. The mantra of a trilling piano note playing alongside recordings of sticks banging on dilapidated walls gives “Carrion" a stark and haunting mood.

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