Beautiful, entrancing, wide-eyed, deceptive simplicity pervades this poetic fifth LP by the indie folk New York/ Catskill Mountains quartet fronted by singer-songwriter Emily Sprague, here themed around the natural world’s perceived miracles and mysteries. Central to this is the Jellyfish, a creature that has been around 500 million years and predates the dinosaurs, and on that song Sprague uses it as metaphor for looking at the world: “things just don’t make any sense like the jellyfish - remember when all of this was just a dream?” This dream-like, otherworldly state pervades, such as on the melancholy love song, Started To Grow: “Are you an angel coming from the stars you cut your hair off and you started to glow.” Familiar themes of grief, heartbreak, death and observations on a small community also come to the fore on other numbers including the lovely Sparkle Song, Our Hearts in a Room and This Was a Gift. From the melancholy opener Levitate, the acoustic guitar and Sprague’s delicate breathy voice is the focus point, but Rick Spataro, Felix Walworth, Jonnie Baker gradually join with gentle, sympathetic bass, drums, guitar and keyboards - the music itself has a delicate skin like that of the floating sea creature, and the album’s titular play on words, Jellywish adds to a sense of intangibility. Another standout, Have Heaven, threaded together with a counting chorus, after these openening lines: “Took a long breath in the middle of a town, found myself in a body, there was a long fragment of colors coming from the baby’s eyes.” Overall, there’s poetic, observation, and a dream-like twilight world in this gorgeous album. On Moon, Sea, Devil, “the earth is small but I’m lost in it - isn’t it all just a violent fit.” It’s a release that blinks in the sunlight, all the way to the contemplative closer Gloom Designs in which Sprague describes going to “dive into another state not really caring what happens to me, it’s been a good time in the right places it’s been a bad time for a lot of humans … t’s been a long time since we laughed until we cried it’s been a short time in the entirety of life”, and a contemplation of our destruction of the planet as jellyfish continue to float in their world: “No one wants to hear humanity what have we done to this, is there nothing left to trust absolutely out of control, can you love the cloud just floating around jellyfish, no brain but a wish, classic decimation ends.” Out on Double Double Whammy.
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