Clairvoyants - Your New Boundaries
(Badman)
The music of Your New Boundaries has a presence that is difficult to describe. The songs are emotional and have a heavy, melancholy sound that drapes over you like a blanket. I suppose this is a result of the mixture of sleepy, thick guitars and Brian Dunn's vocals, which remind me of an older, glamorous singing style. He croons full, sustained notes that are confident but brooding and melancholy. Despite the seemingly quiet style, this album is vibrant and dramatic. It is full of poetic lyrics and the music has enough emotional intensity and variety to accompany them.
Horns, double bass, organ, and other keyboards supplement the guitars and drums. The drumming is varied in texture, but is often brushed, and the sound mixes well with the guitars since they are light and echoey and almost otherworldly. One song that is a lovely example of all of the above is "New Name." This song is kind of the black sheep of the album, since the rhythm is more varied and exotic than in other songs, since it is made with bongo drums along with the standard drums. The guitar is also livelier, although it still has the light, sad tone of other songs. There are Dunn's smooth vocals, a muted, jazzy trumpet, and the double bass adding to the feeling that this song was dug up from the past. Like other songs on the album, it's a little mysterious.
A song that has a more typical style for Your New Boundaries is "For Granted," in which lightly strummed electric guitar echoes by itself then gradually gets fuller. A cello (?) comes in, followed by an organ and drums that are light on the symbols and brushed. All this plus the vocals makes a flowing, light backdrop for poignant lyrics: "Once things are granted we come to expect things we don't deserve." Another beautiful song is the title track, which is simply gentle vocals and acoustic guitar that is full of motion and light. The lyrics in this song (as in others) are kind of complex and the meaning isn't always clear, but they are nice to listen to, and in the end, that is what's most important, I think.
In fact, this entire album is nice to listen to. It's earnest, poetic, and, most of all, it's beautiful, seductive music.
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