Absolutely Yours have built ‘Desire Path’ around a deceptively simple idea: memory rarely resembles the place where it originated. The Minneapolis band channels that concept into a release brimming with shimmering guitars, gentle tones, and fluid, celestial vocals to help offset the quiet letdowns that accompany the passage of time. Rather than looking for refuge in nostalgia, the album explores a deeper question: what happens when our reflections of childhood look much more beautiful than the reality ever was?
The title track creates that mood immediately. Its hazy atmosphere makes the guitars of Bridget Collins and Mark Ritsema seem to gleam from somewhere just out of reach. “Bright Side” carries a sunnier surface, though its optimism has enough ambiguity to keep it from becoming saccharine. Absolutely Yours understand that brightness can sometimes be another form of longing. “Rosemary’s Eyes” hits deep. The rhythm section of Jacob Lauer (bass) and Andy Karel (drums) wraps the melody like a warm blanket, while Collins’ vocals and Ritsema & Dan Remes’ instrumentation give the track a classic dream pop feel with sparkling, ethereal guitars and subtle keyboard flourishes.
“Let It Die” allows a darker admission into the album’s otherwise luminous palette. Its running time gives the band enough room to let resignation settle in without overplaying it. “Margaret,” meanwhile, is the album’s most immediately affecting song, a wistful portrait in which shimmering guitar threads seem to blur the distinction between remembered innocence and adult awareness. That contradiction deepens on “Flight Simulation,” whose title suggests escape without leaving the ground while “Are You Listening?” shifts the album toward direct interpersonal uncertainty, transforming its dreamy surroundings into the backdrop to ask the question: can another person actually hear what you are trying to say? “Eros Bow” then brings desire back into the foreground, giving the album a more sensual charge without abandoning its gauzy character in the urgency.
By the time “Are You Running From Me?” appears, the questions have become harder to ignore. The title carries an accusation, but also vulnerability. Absolutely Yours leave that ambiguity intact, and it gives the song considerably more emotional reach. ”The Asters” closes the record with an image of fragile beauty that feels perfectly suited to the album’s preoccupation with impermanence. ‘Desire Path’ is an album about the paths we take through our own past, especially when the reality of what happened doesn’t match what we remember. Absolutely Yours take these questions and surround them with bright guitar playing and melodies that sound instantly familiar giving a sense of warmth and protection. Under that beautiful shine is a more painful reality: becoming an adult doesn’t make the past disappear. It just changes how we see everything we used to think we knew.
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