 |
genius.com | ATO |
· · ·
What an oblique flex to open your ninth album with a litany of celebrity tracheotomies. And what a clarifying flex to kick off the narrative with your own.
Okkervil River draw together threads of frailty and mortality to suggest a tone for the upcoming hour, but the tenderness of the lyrics fails to break through dense arrangements of jewel-toned synths, which glisten with humidity between expansive echoes of drum machines.
Until a sudden tropical breeze blows open the windows, filling the room with light and colour and the rich aroma of ripe pineapples.
It’s incredible, their knack for dropping sunny countermelodic sunshine into the back quarter of a song like a glacé cherry into a cocktail. An indie requiem is recontextualised as a calypso of life.
Sometimes all a dusty room needs is a breath of fresh air.