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Building on the bones of their 2006 debut, Shadows Rise, Travel by Sea return April 2008 with their sophomore LP Days of My Escape, the third release on Aquarium Drunkard’s Autumn Tone imprint.
If I were writing a book on what I like most about music, I’d call it something literary and mildly pretentious like, “Of Landscapes and Storytelling.” I view those two items as a singular element - where stories exist within a delicately painted environment - where landscapes are a living, breathing thing that informs and sustains the sensibilities of the people living within it. An environment where you get a sense of place, and are able to exist there for a moment, within the story, outside of yourself. Travel by Sea’s sophomore release, Days of My Escape, achieves just that.
TBS’s Kyle Kersten lives in California, and his partner, Brian Kraft, lives in Colorado. They record their music in pieces over the Internet. This distant relationship somehow leads to incredibly intimate and contemplative music. Most musical collaborations find themselves recording in the same studio. When you’re face to face with someone, many of life’s details fall to the implied or understood and, are ultimately, overlooked — such is life. Conversely Kersten and Kraft, on the other hand, must create ever more vivid images for one another, to account for the miles between them.
Their debut, Shadows Rise, was an excellent and straightforward piece of alt.country, at once invoking Buckner, Oldham and Adams. With Days Of My Escape it seems they’re discovering the twists, turns, nooks and crannies of the genre. Before the country-folk blend was overt and unmistakable, surfacing with an immediacy. Here, Travel by Sea are using it as a foundation from which to grow. I suppose you could say, if alt.country was the framework of the story on Shadows Rise, it’s now the landscape on which the story is being told. With DOME, Travel by Sea have created something, sonically and lyrically, that stays true to their roots, but diverse and expansive enough to grow artistically.
Like any good writing in the folk realm — or any realm, for that matter — Travel by Sea continue to cut to the heart of the human experience. It’s emotional and insightful and, at times, incredibly astute — speaking candidly of our desperate nature without dwelling on the melancholy, but rather the hopeful — the ability to overcome through honesty. Pink Nasty (nee Sara Beck) adds to this, at one point offering a soft, subtle complement to Kersten’s willowy voice, while The Broken West’s Dan Iead lends his pedal steel, weeping in response.
And when I think about these things, and listen to these songs individually, as chapters in a book, the album’s title resonates more clearly each time. In Days of My Escape, you get a sense of place. You can live there for a moment, within that story, outside of yourself. You can escape. – joe crosby
Download:
MP3: Travel by Sea :: Truth Was
MP3: Travel by Sea :: Split Second Time
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MP3: Travel by Sea :: Too Much Too Quickly
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Purchase: Travel by Sea - Days of My Escape
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Filed under: Travel By Sea, Autumn Tone |
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As much as Merge Records was defined by Superchunk’s roaring maelstrom indie-pop in the 90s, it has come to more resemble label co-founder Mac McCaughan’s other project, Portastatic, in the 2000s. Bands like the Essex Green, the Rosebuds, the Clientele and, yes, Portastatic, have created vibrant orchestrated pop, noisy anthems and everything in between. Wye Oak, one of the latest additions to the Merge release roster, fits snugly among them with touchstones all their own.
If Children is a record that moves in swells. Opener “Please Concrete” uses a balance of folk picking with surges of My Bloody Valentine noise to style an opening track that leads well into the rest of the album. As a map to guide the rest of the record, that song’s parts serve well. “Archaic Smile” serves up a gorgeous slice of slow-core. “Warning” uses simmering bass and a cascade of feedback to replicate the opener’s bridge, giving a propulsive blast to follow up the simpler beginnings. “Regret” is a lovely, quiet song that never leaves its humble melody aside to build anything larger, despite it serving as an able bridge to the next song.
But the group that seems to serve as the biggest comparison is His Name is Alive. Channeling the airy, ethereal vocals, Wye Oak takes the song structures of His Name Is Alive and overlays them with more noise. Where HNIA has tended to use more electronic-heavy instrumentation, Wye Oak relies on more of the natural noise and bluster that can be created by guitars and drums.
Even at its loudest moments, If Children still feels like a pop record out of time. “I Don’t Feel Young” could’ve been a Ronnettes number in Phil Spector’s able hands and here they create a wall of sound all their own. At the song’s apex, the drums crash as if mimicking “Be My Baby.” It’s one of the album’s highlights, without question.
There’s a lot of beauty in If Children, but after repeated listens, it doesn’t go much deeper than its gorgeously rendered surface. There’s a ridiculous amount of potential for this band and Merge obviously saw it when they signed them. Somewhere, somehow, If Children will be someone’s perfect soundtrack to a summer night. - j. neas
Download:
MP3: Wye Oak :: Warning
MP3: Wye Oak :: I Don’t Feel Young
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Amazon: Wye Oak - If Children
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7
My Morning Jacket performing The Velvet Underground’s “Head Held High” live at the Lou Reed tribute show at SXSW, March 2008. Read what we said about the show here…
Filed under: My Morning Jacket |
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