Landing - Passages Through
(K)
Because I know the guys in Landing and am friends with some of them, a critique of their new album, Passages Through, must necessarily be colored by this, no matter how consciously I attempt to be objective. To paraphrase Nietzsche, it would be like trying to see a room without a vantage point in the room, in other words, impossible.
Raiding my rucksack of not-too-subjective adjectives though, I think I can say that this album is just simply beautiful in its most neutral of terms; by this I mean that in the standard way one thinks of beauty, the images and feelings that are evoked by this word - archetype if you will. Landing manages to combine the mesmerizing quality of the space rock and shoegazing styles with a definite complexity, cultivating the simplicity that often turned me off of their brethren into something much more compelling to listen to. Guitars convolve in a network of interlacing lines from every point in the stereo spectrum, and song structures rarely, if ever, follow any conventional course. Busyness has always been a favorite device of mine in pop songs, especially when so much pop is utterly uninvolved and uninvolving and there are numerous things going on in Passages Through that engage the listener and, like many like-minded bands, does not serve to just anaesthetize them with its atmospheric pleasantness. It's not quite as enthralling lyrically as I'd like it to be, but it seems like the lyrics come second to the music anyway, not as an afterthought necessarily, but more like they are components of a whole, not to be judged as an entity unto itself. They function in that role anyway; combined with the lulling nature of the vocals, they underscore the mood of the album as one of contemplative elegance.
The only real problem with the album that I can imagine is that it isn't for everyone. If the styles I mentioned above are ones to your liking, Landing does great things with them. If complex pop music interests you, by all means, search this out. If you want relaxing music that is also interesting, etc.
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