No escape from despair, wherever we may go. For those that follow the band (or again, Deeper Graves) there is much here to enjoy as autumn cycles through. ![]() Where We Live is uncomfortable at times, not quite given to the despair of A Grief Observed, but also not quite ready to move on from it. While I do not find the album’s sequencing ideal, I do not know that given the six-song track list, it could be meaningfully changed. The majority of the original wave of bands had either broken up or morphed into something more streamlined meanwhile, only a handful of new. The further down a path one walks, I suppose, the more time they have to reflect upon choices made and not made alike. Toward the end of the ’90s, shoegaze was in a lull. Leaning into the melancholy, the song’s build is unsurprisingly a slow one across the whole of its eleven minutes and as more layers are added, they function almost as a set of complicating memories. Closer “Where You Live” is a heaving, miserable churn of an experience, and I mean that in the most endearing way. Had post-metal not burned itself out in 2008, this song serves as a vision in what might have been. “Spoonfed” is a longer, darker companion to “New Skin”, mining many of the same emotional areas but with considerable breathing room given in its midsection to surge and build – beautifully so, at that. “New Skin”, pointedly, is a sugary companion to Jeff Wilson’s darker work with Deeper Graves. There is a spiritual kinship to Shelter era Alcest in “Gazing into Oblivion” and “New Skin”, slated where they are on the album’s A-side and executed leanly with walls of guitar and clean vocals. These are, however, pushed aside by a greater emphasis on the post- elements and the reliance on surging melodies, not far removed from several of the shoegaze covers the band has trafficked in recent years. Blackened elements remain in spirit, principally in the use of harsh vocals and layered with the occasional blast beat. Where We Live is unlikely to strike fans of the band as surprising – it’s a logical stride from A Grief Observed. ![]() Would the band step further away from the blackened aspects? Would there be a greater indulgence in post and gothic tendencies? Their music has gradually shifted from black metal to shoegaze to post-metal, and finally to the integrated sound known as blackgaze. First broadcast as incoming just as COVID shut down most aspects of the old functioning world, expectations simmered over the summer. ![]() Much to my great joy (…or despair) we did not have to wait seven years for a substantive follow up to A Grief Observed.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |