The experimental rock band from Buffalo, New York return with their sixth LP, bringing an expansive, ethereal but also familiar sound, a grandeur and sensitivity through psycho-geography inspired by the Catskill Mountains and the Hudson Valley. Mixing spoken word, gentle incantations and singing by Jonathan Donahue, there’s a rich, soaring landscape of guitars, piano, brass, strings, woodwind, drums, bells and more, producing a childlike sense of wonder, and streams of consciousness that meander through the eddy and flow of of a liquid landscape. The title not only refers to one of the tracks but also a recurring theme, a sense of other existences, time and place and escapism: “I had a dream we were born horses/ And not human beings/ With more time to run / And less time for things/ Lit by the lightning/ Barefoot and wild/ Side by side against the night/ Against the wind and horizon / While our manes turn from golden to white.” Another standout, and perhaps the best on the album is A Bird of No Address, a song of glorious bittersweet melancholy: “I've been a bird of no address ever since the day you left/ Been so long I could almost forgive, but not yet … I flew the skies for days on end as faraway as I could get / Lost among the clouds of loneliness and regret.” Ancient Love and Patterns are also two of the transcendent standouts, while opener Mood Swings sets the pace like a gentle, long narrative. Perhaps this is an album stronger when in the singing rather than speaking sections, this is nevertheless a powerful, uplifting return by the band, their first since 2019, but among their best since the 1990s heyday of Deserter’s Songs. Rich, sumptuous, otherworldly and serene. Out on Bella Union.
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