Artist – Seahaven
Album – Reverie Lagoon: Music For Escapism Only
Genre – Punk/Indie/Post Rock
Rating – 9/10
Seahaven is a Indie Punk/Post Rock five-piece from Torrance, California. Their sophomore album, Reverie Lagoon: Music Escapism Only is still up for pre-order and drops a week from today. – http://goo.gl/pqn3Uq
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Escapism:
-The tendency to seek distraction from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy.
Before I tell you about the album, you should know that this is an album to put on and get lost in; just close your eyes and let yourself float in it.
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In it’s 52 minutes, it takes you on an aural journey through what feels like a dream. You enter with Fifty-four, a track with a sonic aura of white noise, soft, repeating guitar riffs, and long bass tones that softly leads you to Andreas’ outreached hand, inviting you to escape. Their sound, compared to their previous works, Winter Forever and Ghost, takes on a more atmospheric tone than in the past, but the lush orchestrations fit for a perfect theme. Older fans may find themselves disappointed due to the change in sound, but it truly shows the time and effort they put into this record. I found it to be a more mature approach by the band, focusing on the songwriting in a way that creates an experience, rather than putting the focus on individual songs.
Silhouette, which was the first song released from the album, burns like a long, slow drag from a cigarette. Atmospheric and delicate, it was a perfect representation of the album to come. It’s dreamy tone comes followed by one of my favorite tracks from the album, Wild West Selfishness. Layered guitars open the track and it just builds and builds from there, till eventually it just explodes in heavy guitar riffs, shattering drums, and subtle screaming. On The Floor picks up where the anger of the previous track left off with the feeling of defeat, beginning with reverb laden guitar and vocals, eventually lightening up towards the middle of the track.
Paseo De Las Estrellas, which translates to Walk of the stars, a likely reference to the Hollywood walk of fame, offers a nice interlude before the heavy atmosphere of Seahaven’s ode to being homesick, Highway Blues, drowns you in it’s reverb-laden sound. The album takes a turn with Flesh, with twisting riffs, before bursting into a catchy chorus, before lulling you back before it’s final moments, with Whispers bringing you back around. What comes next is another favorite track, Love To Burn. It starts out with a steady pounding rhythm, before the combination of the bass line with, lead singer, Kyle Soto’s voice creates this airy texture, with strings subtly entering in and out in the background before the chorus comes and grabs your hand and leads you in. It creates this nervous energy, that’s fresh and infectious, yet begs for multiple listens.
The album slows for a second with Solar Eclipse, a piano ballad with a haunting chorus and a beautiful distant horn solo, before resuming it’s dream-like feel with Paseo De Las Estrellas (II). Karma Consequential’s beginning is delightfully poppy, before it changes around the 3:20 mark into something more reminiscent of earlier tracks. The album finishes by bringing back the aura present in Fifty-four with the final track Four-eleven, but stands on it’s own bringing new elements alongside the original melody. A quite fitting end, where you float out the same way you floated it.
Overall, the album is quite good. There are a few standalone tracks, but the album’s effect as a whole is, to me, a wonderful concept. It’s an album that demands multiple listens, and it’s definitely an album you’ll be able to shut off to, if not sing along to. Compared to their previous works, there were less standout moments, but it was not without merit. It’ll definitely make a wonderful evening/night time soundtrack for the coming summer months.
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Review by Phil Schrader
