A Closer Listen
The album starts and ends in waves, a metaphor for the music, which ebbs and flows like the tide. The Great Swells That Carry Us Will Pull Us Under is a perfect post-rock title, and Cardiff’s Aaronson uses the track titles to tell a story without words. A ship sets out at low tide, but ends up in trouble. A storm arises, a wreck ensues, and the ship descends to the fathoms; but at least some of the crew survive. This dramatic backdrop is colored by melodic, expressive passages, conveying both the allure and the peril of the sea. The music can be lulling despite its loudness, producing a hypnotic effect akin to admiring those great swells while forgetting their danger.
And perhaps there is a wider subject in mind, a further metaphor. We are caught in forces beyond our control, greater than our own, that threaten at all times to undo us; and yet we can’t look away or pull back. We may even dive deeper, compelled by an awful fascination. On the one hand, we seek safe passage; on the other, we crave excitement. No matter how one views the theme, one intuits the drama of a life pulled in two directions at once.
The sweetness of the calmer segments produces a false sense of security. Even in “A Monolith to Safe Passage,” the shoal is reached before the shore. The trip is headed to an inevitable conclusion, conveyed by crashing drums and surging guitars. The title track may be the finest piece here, due to its undercurrent of melancholy, but the album flows like a rip current, dependably sedate only at the sobering end. The finale of “Shipwrecks” is particularly bombastic, as expected, ending with an extended drone; the pings of “No Light In The Fathoms” are like a search party, the piano like hope. Cynics may say that only the rescuers “Return to the Surface,” but the tone is so comforting that we prefer to believe the opposite. The sea giveth, the sea taketh away, but sometimes the sea gives back as well. (Richard Allen)
Available here
Thu Jul 13 00:01:24 GMT 2023