While the rest of the EP Welcome to Loveland might be made up of more upbeat tracks and buoyant sounding tracks “Desolation,” the latest single to be taken from it, comes with an air of darker menace. Think of it as the sinister aspect hidden behind the fairground image of fun and happiness that the record’s cover suggests.
It is still music made well within the rock oeuvre but taking a turn into not quite gothic rock but indeed an apocalyptic and dystopian alt-rock sound. It reminds me in many ways of the underrated and excellent Phillip Boa and the Voodoo Club, and that is never a bad comparison to find yourself up against.
Although the product of one band and a home recording set-up, there is something rather expansive about the sound—wide-screen rock made for the modern audience. It could be described variously as a dark take on even alt-rocks often brooding ways, a more metal-infused take on the likes of Nick Cave’s melancholic sound, and a soundtrack that could easily have been lifted from Dante’s Inferno: The Musical. Well, take your pick—it touches on all these and more.
And as big as the track sounds, bend your ear in closer as it ebbs and flows between lulling lows and searing highs, and you realize that it is a song built from layers of texture, each, in themselves, not the powerful rock suckerpunch, but when laid out one on the other in various combinations, able to produce both shifting dynamic and sonic weight.
Soundcloud
Bandcamp
Instagram
Facebook
