Album Thoughts
The first track absolutely gobsmacked me, so here we are again with these crazy bastards.
Song Notes
Phantom Island
- Holy shit what a great song!! It’s bluesy and jazzy and psychedelic and cool and big!!!
- The frantic outro is maddening with the dissonance and rapid drums and encroaching orchestra.
- The chugging guitar at the every end is so cool.
Deadstick
- Feels like a road trip somewhere.
- The vocals are so good, I appreciate the several vocalists included.
Lonely Cosmos
- Ooooh, spooky!
- The flowing juxtaposition of the very relaxed, pleased sections with the eerie fluttering guitar is delightful.
Eternal Return
- This one definitely feels like a journey.
- Oooh, the drop to the deeper vocal lead is very fun.
Panpsych
- The big band making its presence known in the middle of the song is so nice.
- Kind of wild how subtly all that gets used - it’s a big floating buoy that causes the rest of the song to rise with it.
Spacesick
- I think this song is what solidifies some of the feeling of a majority of the album so far - it’s the pleasant floaty bits of a fever dream, followed by some of the more grounded clarity of something soothing.
Aerodynamic
- It’s not just the chords they choose, but the way they choose to do chord shifts that really gets me sometimes.
Sea of Doubt
- It’s interesting how pleasant and happy the instrumentation is given the subject matter.
- I’m glad it makes things through to the end - out of the sea, onto firm ground.
Silent Spirit
- This one plays with the color and darkness of the music really interestingly.
- They seem to like including semi-middle-eastern musicality a good bit, and it’s always really cool when they do.
Grow Wings and Fly
- A great send-off for the album, soaring away from the feverish phantom island.
General Thoughts
- There’s some really sharp tonal shifts here among the first three songs alone.
- I like the ways they’ll run the key of the vocal melody almost counter to the instrumental melody?