Tuned In review: Listen, but don't turn off the lights for 'The Widow Blades'

Those who loathe mainstream music should consider the eerie gorgeousness of Reigns’ “The Widow Blades.”

The fourth album from the U.K. duo who identify themselves as Operatives A and B is, like its predecessors, tied to a perplexing backstory — in this instance, the 1978 disappearance of a middle-age widow during a blizzard.

Although there are several facts and feelings laid out during the hour-long release, this isn’t merely the presentation of evidence for an unsolved mystery. Instead, it’s all about disquieting atmosphere and a disorienting sense of inexplicable doom.

The pair use restraint to magnify the drama of their cold, cinematic concoction. And they complement their dark-as-death-metal lyrics with improbably beautiful arrangements and deadpan vocal delivery.

For example, the lyrics on the track “Hybrium Sulphate,” about drugging someone into a comatose state, are alarming — “You weep blood, go mute and break out in sores” — but the speak-sing vocals and calm music offset the disturbing content. The same goes for “I Will Burn for This,” which opens with graceful keyboards and then segues into a pulsing cadence as the narrator grapples with “such a terrible feeling” of a lost memory: “That Sunday, I drank all day. ... Woke up Tuesday, one eye was swollen shut and every bone was broken in my right hand.”

And despite the somber circumstances, aural beauty prevails, from the music-box pretty arrangement of “The Diagram” (punctuated by snippets of dialog) to the meditative “Horse Murders” (featuring lines such as, “four legs broken and splayed”) to the whimsically decorated drone of “Green Butter.”

Closing cut “The Mounds” is a whopper, nearly 20 minutes long and all over the place, though it mostly retraces Reigns’ steps from earlier tracks with humming stretches, crackling shifts and dark subtext coming to the foreground as the duo mingles shades of prog-rock, jazz and folk.

Pity the poor widow, but her situation is just a prop for this mind-bending journey.

Rating: 4 stars (out of five)

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