freelance whales is a fun band to listen to. period. just take into account their previous effort, weathervanes (2009). on that album they collectively managed to craft euphoric and giddy music replete with thought-provoking songs that took it easy on our collective ears and hearts. and while melancholy does exist too in the freelance whales universe, it is isn’t something of which the band dwells on. now, almost 3-years later the band’s 2012 sophomore offering diluvia materializes, and we get to experience the fun all over again. but it is a bit more than “more of the same.” present still is the above excellent song-writing and those sonic compositions which vacillate between the rife and rich swaths of wide open space grandeur to those dazzling earthbound odes with sparse beautiful simplicity. this is am album with the power to, maybe not fix things, but it does offer an atmosphere in which all seems a bit less pressing and a lot more hopeful and possible.
i got my hands (read ears) on an advance copy of the album diluvia and from the first song, “aeolus” it begins with soft synths and choir-like chanting. this is tranquil easement into an album which blossoms into a deluge of pale and spiraling colors. the second, third and fourth songs, “land features,” “follow through” and “spitting image” is familiar ground. in that they closely resemble the “freelance whales sound” we fell in love with in the first place (the synths, glockenspiel, banjo and harmonium are all still there). yet, it is a bit of a misnomer to even attempt to nail down the freelance whales sound, because it is a wide and uncharted land where the mandolin cozies up with the water phone, and synthesizers make strange bedfellows with a bamboo pipe organ.
the song, “red star” judah dadone shuts us into the dreamscape of hist wistful heart and a torn scrim of red falls down around us…, “i don’t wanna jump from this scarlet star tonight
and bend things so much I can’t remember how they were, let her nova alone breathing outwards to burn,” this is a bitter lump of coal in my throat and a sweet doleful segue into our fragile humanity as one can get.
to some it up diluvia is a fine album right down to the last song, “emergency exit“. this lp it is filled with enough good music to keep you warm and listening the whole winter through. i also want to mention how freelance whales make good and magical use of the lithe and feathery vocals of doris cellar‘s angelic voice, adding just the right amount of buoyancy to various tracks throughout. peace. Continue reading “freelance whales // diluvia”
