Taken from the band’s forthcoming album, SEE, an ambitious concept album inspired by George MacDonald’s Victorian-era fairy tale The Princess and Curdie, ‘The Greatest Gift’ acts as a perfect introduction to the scintillating world the fantastically named Leem of Earth are building.
It not only transforms the listener into this otherworld through the story it tells, but it also ushers in the requisite sonic backdrop: a dreamy alt-rock juxtaposition of understatement and rock weight, deftness and delicacy, lyrical eloquence and musical elegance.
The song also seems to step dexterously over other boundaries too, not least of all chronological: that ‘The Greatest Gift’ sounds like a long-lost Mazzy Star record while beating a lucid-dream-like path to one strand of rock and roll potential destination – the past echoing out of a future yet to arrive – makes it all the more beautiful and beguiling.
Shimmering textures are laid one on top of the other until these opaque layers build into kaleidoscopic sonic weight, robust yet letting the light through and making the colors dance. Dynamics are created through loving lulls and crescendoic highs. And through it all, the pace and poise remain perfectly restrained, the song seeming to drift rather than drive, flowing rather than forcing itself forward unnaturally.
What a gorgeous first taste, what a brilliant song, and what a great way to pull the listener into what, on the strength of this single at least, promises to be a breathtaking album.
