Car Seat Headrest - Teens of Denial (2016)

1) Fill in the Blank; 2) Vincent; 3) Destroyed by Hippie Powers; 4) (Joe Gets Kicked Out of School for Using) Drugs with Friends (But Says This Isn't a Problem); 5) Not What I Needed; 6) Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales; 7) 1937 State Park; 8) Unforgiving Girl (She's Not An); 9) Cosmic Hero; 10) The Ballad of Costa Concordia; 11) Connect the Dots (The Saga of Frank Sinatra); 12) Joe Goes to School

Colossal, sprawling, whimsical, passionate. Car Seat Headrest lay everything they have down to establish themselves in their new, four-man form, and create one heck of a ride of emotional rollercoasters and poignantly powerful rock and roll.

Key tracks: "Vincent", "Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales", "The Ballad of Costa Concordia"

Towards the end of the already colossal Teens of Denial (12 songs but 70 minutes) lies the near 12-minute multi-part epic "The Ballad of Costa Concordia" - an ambitious beast of a song which is the ultimate testament to Toledo's self-biting introspection across several verses, moving from desperation to anxious release. It's the album's big emotional gut-purge moment. Also, one of its verses is a direct homage to the chorus of Dido's "White Flag". If you needed to distill the entire album into one moment, this'd be an appropriate choice: personal gut-spilling lackadaisically cut by an almost undermining levity.

Will Toledo's self-release demo albums got a following in part because of the sheer ambition they displayed: it was a clear that they were the work of someone whose ideas had a far wider scope than the home recordings could stretch to. Where Teens of Style was a quick blast of an introduction to kick off the story of Car Seat Headrest as a recording artist, made out of songs from the self-release days, it's Teens of Denial that's the real follow-up to those albums. It's the realisation of what happens when that vision gets to be unchained, with a little more experience under the belt but the more idiosyncratic features of Toledo's songwriting kept intact - or left to spread even wider.

Teens of Denial could very well be an epic-scale ode to millennial self-doubt, the ultimate 2010s answer to the introspection of the late 90s slacker indie rock that the whole Car Seat Headrest project is so clearly inspired by, but Toledo has a wicked and playful mind that sets out to skew that. What makes Teens of Denial truly itself is the off-kilter sense of humour it has for everything it stands for. The self-jabs are as much as tongue-in-cheek as they are real, the confessionals and genuine glances at the world and people affected by a variety of mental health issues are almost always closed with a punchline to take away the tension, and like any person grown up with the internet it's full of references from fitting to ridiculous. Famous names flicker throughout the lyrics, there's that Dido reference, "Not What I Needed" started out at as an evolved interpolation of The Cars' "Just What I Needed" - and when Ric Ocasek drew back the rights at the last minute, Toledo's solution was to replace the interpolated part with a backwards sample of "Something Soon" from Teens of Style, extending the references to himself. There's an irreverential sense of humour to Toledo's writing: he's aware of his own melodrama and musical influences and he's having fun with it rather than draping himself in earnestness. Which, in return, lends him a particularly unique writing voice that can easily go into a love-it-or-hate-it territory. And if you do love it, Teens of Denial is a real gold mine of immortal one-liners and honestly resonant verses, mingling together in page-long verses and punctuated by a particularly erratic wit.

(As a side point, the initial pressings of the album did feature "Not What I Needed" with the Cars part still intact and the original copy is still floating out there. Honestly, even though the original version might flow a little better musically, the abrupt remake has an intensity and mentality that suits the rest of the album better, and its sudden cacophony gives the otherwise rather relaxed song a heck of an ending. I reckon Ocasek's camp might have done Toledo a favour)

It's also important to note that at this stage, Car Seat Headrest have become a band. Toledo's the central force and always will be even if he'll sometimes protest about it, but the crew - Andrew Katz on drums, Ethan Ives on guitar, Seth Dalby on bass - make their formal introduction here and there's an immediate distinction to be made. The new Car Seat Headrest are an instrumentally tight group of really talented musicians and their dynamic playing gives the project a whole new set of energy - particularly Katz' drumming which here already makes a strong point about being a signature element of the band. The album doesn't waste time highlighting it either. "Fill in the Blank" takes the general liberatingly noisy rock sound of Teens of Style but re-introduces it with a full band in tow, and then "Vincent" comes in to really drive the point across. "Vincent" is a stretched beast of a song, seven minutes of a coiled spring winding tighter until it snaps to life, flicking nonchalantly between intensely interplaying energy and moments of free-falling explosions. It, if anything, shows just how well the new band near telepathically reacts and adapts to Toledo's style of songwriting, moving between tempos and moods without batting an eye. When the new Car Seat Headrest go on full-guitar mode, e.g. "Destroyed by Hippie Powers" or "1937 State Park", they're one of the most vitalised full-on rock bands of the 2010s by far and you can hear it in the sheer power they bring out.

Teens of Denial is a sprawling album, in a manner that seems it's growing wildly rather than designed as such. The songs act as if they flow so freely wherever they want and Toledo can't quite keep them in bay, and he then joins in. The verses and choruses mismatch, outros find themselves extending beyond their original scope and Toledo's performance switches from cool and collected to shouting in the room for no apparent reason: if Toledo paints himself as a mess of a person in the lyrics, then the music follows suite. It's nothing new to Toledo, this is what his original releases were full of, but on Teens of Denial it becomes a strength. There's a particular kind of awe you can feel when confronted with something that feels like a hurricane threw an abundance of miscellaneous ideas all over the front yard but which then makes that mess into a coherent statement, and that's exactly what happens here. The album's jumps back and forth are something exciting, and the key part there is that each of those parts is something memorable, something to cling to. No matter if drenched in distorted guitars, chiming with surprising clarity or taking inspiration somewhere more off the road like the excellent slacker americana of "Drugs with Friends", each melody plays out with strength; each hook holds a great big grip; each song contains something that shouts out and stands up in a near-iconic fashion. The big epics of the album demonstrate this effectively, whether it's the building intensity of "Vincent", the jam-like explosive finale that follows the more refined, organ-accentuated first half of "Cosmic Hero", or the overall stand-out bombast of "The Ballad of Costa Concordia". The last one is an undeniable highlight and perhaps intended to be so, acting as a microcosmos of the many faces of Car Seat Headrest, peaking with its rambling middle-section where Toledo explodes into a rant; a real iconic discography moment.

The heart and key of it all is "Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales". Each Car Seat Headrest album contains that one humongous monolith of a moment where every element of Toledo's musical traits click perfectly together, and the stunning "Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales" is it for Teens of Denial. The choruses alone are the stuff immortal alt. rock moments are made out of, and its changing verses keep throwing new tricks out of their sleeves. With the rest of the album having such a wild attitude, the practically po-faced delivery of "Drunk Drivers" jumps out as the part where Toledo cuts any peripheral notions and focuses on only delivering a song with importance and gravitas, and he succeeds brilliantly. For six and a half minutes everything is completely clear and open; Car Seat Headrest speaking to you and you only with sincerity, with none of the self-consciousness that the rest of the album is so full of, none of the jokes cutting down the weight in the meaning of his words.

Not that the glibness elsewhere in the record is a bad thing. Like throwing a Dido callback in the middle of an emotional centerpoint, the whole of Teens of Denial thrives on constantly positioning its honesty next to an acknowledgment of its own pretensions - the light-hearted counterpoints build up the importance of the more serious moments, and vice versa. It isn't a difficult album, but the constant playing around with its own tropes, the musical and tonal wanderlust and the long rapid-fire lyric sheets with words for days can get a bit too much at first, but that also feels like the point. It's an ambitious record, meant to sound like a big deal from day one, as a real establishing moment for Toledo and Car Seat Headrest (a proper one after the attic clearance of Teens of Style) - and Car Seat Headrest's way to go about is to overload the record with everything they can think of without worrying whether it's going to hold together. But it does, to a most brilliant extent. Each song finds the band placing their everything into its recording, and it's hard not to admire the amount of scope, guts and craftsmanship that's placed into each song. Time will tell how many of its traits hold up against the future of the band but up until this point, this sounds like the culmination of everything all those demo records hinted towards. It's Toledo establishing his sound and voice bolder than ever before in what seems like an intentional aim to create a masterpiece record. Perhaps it's not 100% there per se from a completely subjective perspective, but that's not even close to any real criticism: Teens of Denial is one of the landmark records of 00's indie, and earns the heck out of that title.

Rating: 9/10

Ultra Bra - Kalifornia (1999)

1) Kalifornian ruosteiset kukkulat; 2) Jäätelöauto; 3) Hei kuule Suomi; 4) Sokeana hetkenä; 5) Ilmiöitä; 6) He kääntävät tyynynsä; 7) Jos haluatte; 8) Kirjoituksia; 9) Tylsää, tylsää; 10) Kun vaihtuu vuosituhat; 11) Tyttöjen välisestä ystävyydestä; 12) Helsinki-Vantaa; 13) Musta, niljaisten lehtien kaupunki

A victory lap of sorts: a band playing to their strengths after taking over the country with the last album. More of what you loved, even if not as consistent or striking.

Key tracks: "Hei kuule Suomi", "Kirjoituksia", "Tyttöjen välisestä ystävyydestä"

Most of Kalifornia is vividly familiar to anyone who lived in Finland in the 90s. This was Ultra Bra’s imperial phase, where all the success and exposure from the first two albums paved way for cultural omnipresence, where even album tracks could get heavy airplay exposure. The video for “Kirjoituksia” seemingly never stopped playing on TV’s music programs, the unsuccessful Eurovision candidate “Tyttöjen välisestä ystävyydestä” became a national treasure almost as quickly as it appeared (and no one even remembers which song ultimately was sent in its place to the competition), “Jäätelöauto” is the sound of now-nostalgic summers. Kalifornia is as much an encapsulation of a specific point in time as it is a music album, and there’s no escaping that legacy.

Defining the era is ultimately what defines Kalifornia itself because musically it’s a very comfortable release, in lieu of a better word. It’s the most archetypal representation of Ultra Bra’s music - the other albums show more visible development one way or another, but Kalifornia is the plateau moment of the band’s style. Taking its musical cue from the past key moments and stretching it across an entire album, it bears the very sort of sound you associate with the band the most, for better or worse: it’s exactly what you’d expect from the band but lacks the more interesting (or unique) traits the other albums have. It’s a little bit bigger, maybe: Ultra Bra never shied away from grand arrangements (can’t really help it when you’re a 12-piece band featuring four vocalists and three horn players among others) but Kaliforniaespecially loves its woodwinds and strings. But that too exemplifies how at this stage Ultra Bra were the biggest band in the country, so Kalifornia has the sound to match it - and in a roundabout way, it manages to make their cultural placement at the time the album’s defining sound characteristic. It’s Ultra Bra playing Ultra Bra hit songs right after they had become a national phenomenon playing songs exactly like these: a reprise rather than a sequel.

The thing is, you can hardly fault a band from playing to their strengths and if it’s Ultra Bra that you want then Kalifornia does the job really well. The tracklist flicks through the band’s multiple guises and rarely actually misses: only “Tylsää, tylsää” feels like filler that the album could have been stronger without (that its so aptly named “Boring, Boring” is the best thing about it). Six singles were released from the album and every single one of them merited it - “Hei kuule Suomi”, “Jäätelöauto”, “Sokeana hetkenä”, “Tyttöjen välisestä ystävyydestä”, “Kirjoituksia” and “Ilmiöitä” are all basically varying degrees of brilliant and together form a microcosm of the band’s range of sounds from anthemic to moody, from community-gathering pop choruses to showcasing their strength as a(n occasional) rock group. “Kirjoituksia” in particular is one of their very best: a dry, groove-laden rocker driven by a raw organ riff and flourished by so many of the band’s famous vocal harmonies, and despite the years it has never stopped being exciting and downright thrilling. A number of album tracks could also just as well be a part of the pantheon - I’m particularly drawn to the triumphant “Kalifornian ruosteiset kukkulat” and the beautifully apocalyptic, atmospheric late album hidden gem “Kun vaihtuu vuosituhat”.

But it’s not a big exaggeration to say that Kalifornia doesn’t feel as important in the band’s story as it by all accounts should be, based on all the big songs in its tracklist. It’s arguably the album that most people have the fondest memories of, but it simultaneously feels like their least mentioned, and from a personal perspective there’s definitely a grain of truth in thinking that it comes across almost too typically Ultra Bra. The various facets of the band’s personality come across better on the other albums and if I’m looking for just the core distillation, their actually quite excellent best of compilation feels more compelling. And yet, that’s not really the album’s fault given how good it is, with what half the album being classics of some degree and most of the other half happily standing nearby. On the other hand though, if you want a time capsule to late 90s Finland, few albums come close to this - the sheer amount of cultural weight on this album’s shoulders is incredible, and the fact that an orchestral big band pop album like this could dominate the country is one of the things I love about the Finnish pop culture acceptance of absolutely anything. So, context included, Kalifornia is probably not the very best of Ultra Bra, but out of all the four albums it’s definitely the most Ultra Bra -esque.

Rating: 7/10

Travis - 12 Memories (2003)

1) Quicksand; 2) The Beautiful Occupation; 3) Re-Offender; 4) Peace the Fuck Out; 5) How Many Hearts; 6) Paperclips; 7) Somewhere Else; 8) Love Will Come Through; 9) Mid-Life Krysis; 10) Happy to Hang Around; 11) Walking Down the Hill; 12) Some Sad Song [hidden track]

Happy-go-lucky troubadours run out of luck, get less happy. The most inwards-looking Travis ever got, and they got my full attention at last.

Key tracks: "Quicksand", "Love Will Come Through", "Mid-Life Krysis"

Travis - the harmlessly inconspicuous, squeaky clean, la-de-da sing-along guys mostly known for earworm fluff like “Why Does It Always Rain on Me” - aren’t the sort of act you’d ever expect to be moody, but the borderline self-consciously dour, gray-tone cover of 12 Memories speaks for itself. This should have been a victory lap for Travis, given the worldwide success of the preceding album The Invisible Band, but then everything hit. The post-9/11 years were a mess of global anxiety, the UK was dragged into a war no one wanted to partake in and on a more personal level, Travis themselves almost reached their end when drummer Neil Primrose nearly died in an accident, suffering significant injuries instead. 12 Memories was born out of a tumultuous period where things started getting a little too heavy to handle and no one really wanted to make another upbeat pop album. Instead, the sessions started producing catchy tunes about civilian war casualties, violence and general downbeat introspection. 

Travis can’t escape themselves - there’s still plenty of hummable melodies and catchy choruses - but they couldn’t be any different from their usual selves. It’s most clearly audible in the album’s tone, dominated by a constant sense melancholy and frequent moments of quietly bubbling frustration breaking through. When the results are more familiarly Travis-like, there’s still a twist there: “Quicksand” and “Somewhere Else” are punctuated by their pessimism and ache respectively, “Re-Offender” could have probably slotted neatly within the past albums if it wasn’t for its depiction of domestic abuse and “Love Will Come Through” is a Travis love song as sung by someone who knows they’re lying through their teeth just to keep a semblance of hope around. “Paperclips” - a simple acoustic-based song - is a bleak dark night of the soul and completely devoid of any light, and it’s actually effective. It also makes it clear that Fran Healy’s voice can in fact be a very effective thing - his soft-spokenly frail tone finds its natural habitat in a moodier context.

But while 12 Memories is largely characterised by its mood, what makes it at times downright exciting is the band’s decision to move somewhere different sonically while they’re at it hacking away their past reputation: it is - by Travis’ standards - an adventurous album. Who would have thought you’d hear something as abruptly violent as the guitar breaks on “How Many Hearts” on a Travis album? Later on “Mid-Life Krysis” backs its verses with a constant drone that gives it an unsettling tension, “Happy to Hang Around” is freezing cold much thanks to its sharply mixed drums and other sudden production tweaks that make it sound ever so disjointed, and at the very end the band move their instruments to the background and layer the restlessly dreamy “Walking Down the Hill” with a near-electronic soundscape that takes it into a world of its own. Travis explore new sounds and elements throughout the album’s length and not only does it keep the listener on his toes, but through doing so they manage to beat away one of my personal complaints of Travis’ catalogue, i.e. that they’ve rarely offered anything new to the table. 

So when a band who is perfectly able to knockout a dang good tune but suffers from frequent stagnation ends up making an album where they very decidedly avoid repeating themselves, you get to the juicy center part of the Venn diagram. Besides a couple of slightly lesser tunes (”Peace the Fuck Out” wastes a great bridge to an otherwise passable ditty where the most embarrassingly memorable thing is the awkward swearing, and “How Many Hearts” only ever comes alive when the guitar walls come crashing), 12 Memories combines Travis’ best melodic elements with really neat arrangements and a tangible emotional weight that does its own great job carrying the album. It’s especially apparent after the halfway point, because starting from “Somewhere Else” the album really transforms from a nice excursion to actually great. “Love Will Come Through” and “Mid-Life Krysis” are the album’s absolute highlights, “Walking Down the Hill” never stops being mesmerising in its passive brooding and even the hidden track “Some Sad Song” is a secret success - its solo piano melancholy is a perfect full stop at the end of the tracklist. The awkward notion that a serious tone indicates good music is obviously hanging about, but whether it was because the context drove the band this way or they were heading towards a change anyway after reaching one apex point, it’s undeniable how inspired 12 Memories sounds at its best. If Travis’ main issue always was how intangible they could be with their happy-go-lucky dittiness (to the point that titling one of their albums The Invisible Band is almost ironic) then here’s both the emotional resonance and the consistently good songs that break through that. 

This seems to be the album that tends to get brushed off when Travis fans discuss the band, but for the same reasons it’s the record that those who’ve never been that bothered by the Scottish quartet might find worth their time. What 13 was to Blur, this is to Travis. 

Rating: 8/10

John Frusciante - Curtains (2005)

1) The Past Recedes; 2) Lever Pulled; 3) Anne; 4) The Real; 5) A Name; 6) Control; 7) Your Warning; 8) Hope; 9) Ascension; 10) Time Tonight; 11) Leap Your Bar

Somber and sparse introspection centered around an acoustic guitar and a heavy voice. Frusciante at his most intimate, but no less carefully arranged.

Key tracks: "The Past Recedes", "Lever Pulled", "Ascension"

It got delayed by a month but Curtains still managed to hit its target window, and with its release John Frusciante completed his absolutely bonkers decision to shove out as many albums as he could within 12 months, most of them within the last half of it (or the last half plus one month, given the delay). You could have possibly expected the last of the lot to be some kind of culminating triumph of a victory lap, but Curtains is anything but. It's the quietest and most delicate of the bunch, intentionally focused on Frusciante and either an acoustic guitar or a piano with select few accompaniments to go with them. Where much of the 2004 collection was clearly coloured by the people Frusciante collaborated with, on Curtains it's largely just about just the man himself, with the few collaborators undisturbingly doing their work in the background.

It's somewhat inevitable for albums like this to have a certain kind of emotional gravitas, and much of Curtains is, as expected, world-weary and melancholy. That kind of weight comes to Frusciante naturally, given his life experience and the struggles he's by this point left behind but never forgotten. Curtains weighs heavy with somber introspection, cut with a hint of the relief that he survived through everything he went through - it brings to the front what's always been coursing behind the lines and melodies in the previous albums. Frusciante puts it well himself in "The Past Recedes", bluntly defining much of his 00s mindset: "to be here you first got to die / so I gave it a try / and what do you know / time was so long ago". But the person who sings those lines isn't a haunted man, it's a gentle voice full of warmth and hope. Curtains is sad album but it's interpreted by someone who's found peace from his ghosts, and its overall feel is more meditative. Somber, but not bleak.

"The Past Recedes" is a gorgeous song: it's also very lush and meticulously arranged, full of layered guitars, backing vocal harmonies and other elements that make it sound orchestrated despite largely just featuring Frusciante on his own. Curtains does this a lot, where it uses the sparse building blocks of each song with powerful intent, so that every time something beyond an acoustic guitar appears it feels monumental, and something as gently crashing as the sudden choruses of "Control" - which throw a great contrast to its fade-in/out verses - feel bold and explosive as a result. The contrasts are so stark that when "Ascension" brings out simple keyboard texture to back Frusciante, it comes across like a stylistic whiplash and the equivalent of sticking an electronic song in a rock album. Songs where things are actually stripped down to the very basics, like how you'd expect from the typical Acoustic Album, are relatively few and far between. The change in approach shows particularly clearly when the full band does come out to play and Frusciante grabs onto his electric guitar - the excellent early album trilogy "Lever Pulled" / "Anne" / "A Name" is like a direct bridge to the earlier albums (most notably The Will to Death) but all the instruments are clearly playing back fiddle to the man in front, gently making their presence known in a cool and controlled fashion - each one treated with the same gentleness as the acoustic.

Even when there aren't any other instruments, Frusciante turns his own voice into one. Rich background vocals aren't an anomaly in his body of work but due to the sparseness of Curtains, their constant presence here is highlighted even further and frequently underline the emotional centerpoints of each song. Similarly, when there's nothing else to steal your attention away it's the voice that gets you, and so a lot of Curtains' most memorable moments come directly from Frusciante himself. Sometimes it's particularly overt: "Ascension" is a showstopper parade of killer vocal hooks in all forms (lead melody, wordless hook, background harmonies, you name it), "Your Warning" becomes the album's big tearjerker song through Frusciante's fragile falsetto sinking into his own loneliness towards the song's end in an utterly heartbreaking and memorable way, and the piano arrangement of "Leap Your Bar" is so skeletal that it's Frusciante's vocal delivery that literally makes the song. When I think back on Curtains without listening to it, it's the vocals that I remember the clearest - they effectively determine each song's general mood regardless of the musical or lyrical content, driving the rest of the composition, and it's the little inflections and details in how Frusciante sings that become the sticking points. Curtains isn't where Frusciante shows off his pipes the loudest and it's instead rather restrained throughout in that department; but it's the album where out of any of his albums he really hammers down the emotional weight his voice has.

Frusciante's overall winning streak throughout this period continues on Curtains, even if out of the albums released under his name it's the least song-y: one not defined by its big songs but rather intended to be taken in as a whole, ideally played in a setting that suits its low-key tones. Or in other words, it's the album that suffers the most if the songs are removed from their context due to the very nature of how subtle they are, gorgeous as they may be; some of Frusciante's most tender work and most beautiful moments can be found concentrated here. His music has always been very personally direct and that's one of his solo material's main appeals - Curtains is that at its most intimate level.

Rating: 8/10

Sufjan Stevens - Illinois (2005)

1) Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois; 2) The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You’re Going to Have to Leave Now, or, ‘I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!’; 3) Come On! Feel the Illinoise!; 4) John Wayne Gacy Jr.; 5) Jacksonville; 6) A Short Reprise for Mary Todd, Who Went Insane, but for Very Good Reasons; 7) Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!; 8) One Last 'Whoo-Hoo!’ for the Pullman; 9) Chicago; 10) Casimir Pulaski Day; 11) To the Workers of the Rock River Valley Region, I Have an Idea Concerning Your Predicament; 12) The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts; 13) Prairie Fire That Wanders About; 14) A Conjunction of Drones Simulating the Way in Which Sufjan Stevens Has an Existential Crisis in the Great Godfrey Maze; 15) The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!; 16) They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!; 17) Let’s Hear That String Part Again, Because I Don’t Think They Heard It All the Way Out in Bushnell; 18) In This Temple as in the Hearts of Man for Whom He Saved the Earth; 19) The Seer’s Tower; 20) The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders; 21) Riffs and Variations on a Single Note for Jelly Roll, Earl Hines, Louis Armstrong, Baby Dodds, and the King of Swing, to Name a Few; 22) Out of Egypt, into the Great Laugh of Mankind, and I Shake the Dirt from My Sandals as I Run

The height of the mid-00s indie maximalism, in the form of a personalised road trip to the great state of Illinois. History lessons and heart-tugging emotional resonance.

Key tracks: "Come On! Feel the Illinoise!", "Chicago", "Casimir Pulaski Day"

Whether or not the 50 States project was ever an even remotely serious thought in Sufjan Stevens’ head, Illinois is an album that sounds like it was borne out of commitment for such a gigantic theme. The first ‘States’ album, Michigan, already hinted at a larger sound but it had its feet firmly on the ground. By Illinois, fans and critics alike had already ran full-steam ahead with the concept and thus the album too goes all the way, fully over the top with giant arrangements, ludicrous song titles, lyrics that drip with trivia and namechecks and a general world-engulfing ambition. Even if Stevens never intended to complete the other 48 states, he was fully aboard his own hype train when composing Illinois.

All the better for it - that indie pop bombast is what makes Illinois such a great album. It bears a sound aimed to create a sense of awe and wonder, utilising choirs, horns, string ensembles and any other kitchen sinks it can cram in (the instrument list for Sufjan alone is overwhelming) to create something that sounds larger than life. Through it, the state of Illinois transforms into a fantastic realm of miracles, immortal characters and epic myths, a treasure trove of legends rivaling the Greek mythology. Michigan, the obvious comparison point, used the state concept as a framework for Stevens’ more characteristic introspection; here, he’s out to create a love letter to the state itself. Sufjan himself reveals another side of himself as a charming tour guide full of dry wit and smart wordplay, shedding his usual downcast troubadour form for something more befitting of the album. There’s a particular kind of joy and awe to music that wholeheartedly believes there is no point to restrict its expression and here Sufjan shows just how well he can wield a massive set of tools.

The personal touch is still there, importantly. Had Illinois just been a state tour it could still have been a great album, but it’s Sufjan’s own connection to the state (he frequently visited it growing up) that gives the incredible sound a matching warm soul. This time it’s not as much on spotlight as it was on Michiganand things never get too dour (this is a celebration of the namesake state, after all), but it focuses the grand scope of Illinois to something closer and relates its context to a more human level, with the two sides often mingling together and subtly morphing into eachother, with the twist on “Come On! Feel the Illinoise!” and its brilliant turn from an anthemic welcome to a confessional halfway through serving as an example almost right away. The interweaving of the personal then appears throughout the rest of the album, comfortably moving amidst the whimsical history lessons. It also forms the heart of the album, with “Chicago” and “Casimir Pulaski Day”. They’re two complete opposites (one a grand anthem, the other a quiet and sparse affair) with their emotional core tightly wound to Sufjan himself. “Casimir Pulaski Day” is gorgeous and utterly heartbreaking though little to do with the state on its own (which does not undermine just what a great song it is), but “Chicago” is the ultimate mix of everything the album has to offer - it’s a stupendous signature song worth all the reverance it gets for how incredibly moving, stunning a track it is. It’s the pinnacle of Sufjan’s personal angle for the state, the tale of running away somewhere else to find something new to life, and he pours his heart over the song’s singalong-choirs, rousing choruses and sweeping string arrangements. It’s arguably Sufjan’s crowning achievement overall.

There’s certainly a lot more to the album than “Chicago”. The length - 21 songs, 75 minutes - plays into the album’s grand scale and seems like it could be a problem at first but Illinois keeps up its pace brilliantly throughout its length. For one, the number of tracks is largely inflated by the various interludes which aren’t really a big deal - they’re short (it’ll probably take you longer to read the titles for some of them) and more importantly, they’re segues done right. They bridge together the larger key tracks in a manner where the transitions blend together, allowing for the tonal and musical switches to flow from one to another without coming acgross abrupt; Illinois is a great example of interludes used effectively, weaving its many moods and elements together in a way that makes the whole so much greater. The actual songs between are all various degrees of great, to the point that listing them all out feels redundant - pick a non-interlude and it’s going to be either inspirationally fun, genuinely touching or most likely a mixture of both. It’s the final notch on Illinois’ list of achievements: despite its massive scope and size, it holds together consistently and frequently surprises with yet another new twist after you had thought you’d already heard it all. If there’s a single dipping point it’s at the very end, with the outro-esque “Out of Egypt…” fizzling out in a muted manner that is at odds compared to the rest of the journey.

After the release of Illinois and the subsequent non-appearance of any real follow-up, Sufjan would end up publicly cancelling the 50 States project while claiming it was just a publicity stunt, and whilst it would have been fascinating to say the least, it’s ended up becoming a boon to his body of work. No other state album that had come after Illinois could have topped the amount of heart, soul and creative madness that went into it: it may be just a single album but it’s a concentrated explosion of all the ambition and imagination that the entire project would have detailed. Rather than suffer from diminishing returns from recording countless more albums, each more distanced from Sufjan himself (Sufjan has admitted that he already had to relocate some anecdotes to Illinois to make them fit this album), Illinois now stands (nearly) alone among Sufjan’s works. It further emphasises just what a wonderful and unique record it is: a one-of-a-kind road trip.

Rating: 9/10

Sparklehorse - Good Morning Spider (1998)

1) Pig; 2) Painbirds; 3) Saint Mary; 4) Good Morning Spider; 5) Sick of Goodbyes; 6) Box of Stars (Part One); 7) Sunshine; 8) Chaos of the Galaxy/Happy Man; 9) Hey, Joe; 10) Come On In; 11) Maria’s Little Elbows; 12) Cruel Sun; 13) All Night Home; 14) Ghost of His Smile; 15) Hundreds of Sparrows; 16) Box of Stars (Part Two); 17) Junebug

Chaotic and peaceful at the same time: the conflicting moods of a man in recovery, captured in vulnerable melodies and the occasional throwback to the wilder days.

Key tracks: "Pig", "Chaos of the Galaxy/Happy Man", "Maria's Little Elbows"

The thematic heart of Good Morning Spider is “Chaos of the Galaxy/Happy Man”, which is aptly located right in its center. “Happy Man” is a fantastic 90s indie rock classic and a rare example of the oft-worn out Mark Linkous most high on life - exuberantly looking outwards, culminating in a most triumphant chorus where Linkous shouts his desperation away. The chaos of the galaxy eats it away though, in the form of a radio static that dips in and out of its echo-filled emotional distance, obscuring Linkous’ lust for life with its persistent hum that sometimes drowns the song completely. It effectively distorts what could have been a true break-out moment for Sparklehorse, seemingly in an act of self-sabotage. It however makes for a fitting allegory for the whole of Good Morning Spider and Linkous’ state of mind within.

Shortly after the first Sparklehorse album Linkous suffered a drug overdose that left him legally dead for a brief moment before he miraculously pulled through. The incident caused a great ripple: Linkous attributed the melancholy, dream-like textures and the frail mood of his later albums to his brain’s chemical state having been permanently altered by his near-death experience. Good Morning Spider is the transition. It’s an album of convalescence: Linkous’ ache is all over the songs, his energy sapped but will pushing through.

“Pig” opens the album like none of that ever happened, with a cheeky punk rage that rolls and roars in a fun, chaotic fashion. It’s a huge red herring though, because as soon as it’s over Linkous collapses. The off-beat 90s American indie streak of the debut album is recognisably present, but it progressively gets overtaken by quiet mid-tempo mood pieces and a persistent atmosphere of weary bittersweetness. Early cuts like “Pig” or the most Vivadixie-esque “Sick of Goodbyes” quickly make space for simple songs where Linkous’ filtered vocals sound like they’re separated by a great distance from the rest. Out of all the Sparklehorse albums this is the quietest, almost meditatively so. Perhaps predictably its greatest parts are where that stillness gets broken: apart from any already mentioned, its the likes of the deceptively perky “Ghost of His Smile”, elegiac “Hundreds of Sparrows” and the soaring, incredibly pretty “Maria’s Little Elbows” (Linkous really had a damn good knack for a killer hook, even if he often understated it) which you take with you from Good Morning Spider.

Without undermining the strengths of Good Morning Spider, it’s not an album that boasts with its songwriting. These aren’t show-off songs and they rarely bother with even entertaining the thoughts, but they sound gorgeous and they do it with a sense of depth to them. A stream of consciousness runs strongly through the Sparklehorse discography all the way from the surreal nature of the lyrics, but on Good Morning Spider that sense is the strongest. The bulk of it doesn’t bounce out and grip the listener that way, but the obviously therapeutic nature they had on Linkous comes out in a frail, intimate beauty that’s strong in its own right. They’re songs that you may not hum away from the album but which feel essential when you play them.

The greatest part of “Chaos of the Galaxy/Happy Man” is in its last third, where the “Happy Man” portion has been completely eaten away by the noise right as it had started to explode – and then the song starts pushing back, growing in volume until it breaks free from the static and bursts out with all its strength right as it starts to take flight. It’s a true moment of triumph, not just artistically and musically, but also conceptually - it’s Linkous tearing away his medical demons for one brief moment of victory. For all its pain, Good Morning Spider isn’t a sad album. It’s about recovery.

Rating: 8/10

Sparklehorse - Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot (1995)

1) Homecoming Queen; 2) Weird Sisters; 3) 850 Double Pumper Holley; 4) Rainmaker; 5) Spirit Ditch; 6) Tears on Fresh Fruit; 7) Saturday; 8) Cow; 9) Little Bastard Choo Choo; 10) Hammering the Cramps; 11) Most Beautiful Widow in Town; 12) Heart of Darkness; 13) Ballad of a Cold Lost Marble; 14) Someday I Will Treat You Good; 15) Sad & Beautiful World; 16) Gasoline Horseys

Sparklehorse at their most lucid; still slotting nicely into the wave of 90s indie eccentrics. Classic US indie sound but something's still amiss.

Key tracks: "Saturday", "Cow", "Someday I Will Treat You Good"

An important part of the Sparklehorse mythology is Mark Linkous’ accidental drug overdose: both Linkous’ mindset and music changed permanently after the incident that rendered him clinically dead for a few fleeting moments and which he never really recovered from fully. The traditional Sparklehorse elements consist of a beautiful haziness, an oddly uplifting melancholy and a frail joy to be alive despite how aching it can be. Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot was Linkous’ only album recorded under the Sparklehorse moniker before his near-death experience and it lacks the overaching atmosphere and mood that dominates all the other Sparklehorse albums. It’s strikingly lucid: lively, clear and often without any filters or vocal effects. If Linkous’ overdose sent him to an everlasting melancholy weariness (which would, sadly, ultimately be the end of him), on Vivadixie he’s wide awake. 

Without that haze Linkous slots in nicely within the mid/late-90s US alternative/indie scene - very quirky and eager to play by its own rules but equally very tuneful, with the dry production and tight band interplay associated with the sound. Linkous is backed here by members of Cracker whose experience playing together translates even to his songs and while it’s clear that he’s in charge, there’s an attempt here to present Sparklehorse as a full, real band, certainly moreso than later on. Linkous’ penchant for fragile beauty is already showing up but it’s frequently interrupted by moments of interspersed wild liveliness and borderline raucousness, filtered through his usual surrealist lyrical imagery. The ramshackle “Rainmaker” and “Hammering the Cramps”, the honest-to-god unabashed alternative anthem “Someday I Will Treat You Good” and especially the absurd, banjo-twiddling, guitar-revving alternate dimension stadium anthem “Cow” show off Linkous’ whimsy and vigour that would largely get buried underneath later on. They’re also Vivadixie at their best - the album really comes to life when the band do as well and in particular “Cow” is a standout moment in the whole Sparklehorse discography, even if it’s hindered by its pivotal hook moment being something as (intentionally) inane as “pretty girl, milking a cow”. But then, that too is part of the consciously odd charm.

The tender side of Sparklehorse that would later on become the defining one is still a running presence throughout Vivadixie, though favouring sparser arrangements as a contrast to the more energetic full-band plays. They are good songs - and the chorus of “Saturday” features one of Linkous’ all time loveliest melodies - but there’s plenty of them and they all rely on the same bag of tricks. It doesn’t make e.g. “Spirit Ditch” or “Sad & Beautiful World” any less pretty, but they do start to run samey as they start piling up. Linkous had already been active in music for quite a while before this album, but there is a hint of him still figuring out his solo voice here - it’s very much a diamond in the rough kind of debut, and it’s most apparent in the calmer moments you can’t help but compare with all the similar ones from the later albums. 

The matter of the fact is that for me, the reason I fell in love with Sparklehorse was that overarching, wistful beauty that covers the music all across his later albums. While generally Linkous’ is by and far the same songwriter here as he would always be, the particular mood and resonant atmosphere that really make his music are missing. There are other elements filling those gaps on Vivadixie but there are rough edges here and there, both in form of songs that are almost there but not quite yet, as well as in decisions like including the completely pointless, sound collage-esque interludes. Linkous would later on go to say that he had little idea what he was going for with the album and you can get a sense of that, even if the music’s really good. Vivadixie is arguably the least of the four Sparklehorse albums, but you could still confidently say thjat it’s nonetheless a borderline essential album in his small discography, thanks to its high points. And in addition, it’s an interesting glimpse into Linkous’ sound without its most identifiable element - the start of a what-could-have-been path before it got derailed into a different direction.   

Rating: 7/10

The Smiths - The Queen Is Dead (1986)

1) The Queen Is Dead; 2) Frankly, Mr Shankly; 3) I Know It’s Over; 4) Never Had No One Ever; 5) Cemetry Gates; 6) Bigmouth Strikes Again; 7) The Boy with the Thorn in His Side; 8) Vicar in a Tutu; 9) There Is a Light that Never Goes Out; 10) Some Girls Are Bigger than Others

The Smiths hit parade. A band realising their talent after a shaky start and writing the songs that would be the base for their legacy. 

Key tracks: "Cemetry Gates", "Bigmouth Strikes Again", "There Is a Light that Never Goes Out"

The Queen Is Dead is maybe not The Smiths’ best (though I mainly say that because I seriously struggle ranking their albums), but it is their most solid release, something which has a lot to do with how it’s the one album where the band themselves are operating comfortably. They were still very wet behind the ears on The Smiths, Meat Is Murder is just messy as all the dominant egos are clashing and come Strangeways, Here We Come the band were already unravelling. Each of those states had an impact on the sound of the albums themselves: on The Queen Is Dead the band is in harmony, and so is the album.

The concept most associated with The Smiths is that of obnoxiously intelligent and narcissistically witty melodramatic romantics who’d create a swiveling pop song to charm you in a second, and that’s exactly the kind of album The Queen Is Dead. Morrissey takes stabs at political establishments, lovers both would-be and already-gone, his nemeses and himself, Marr plays some of the most heavenly guitar jangles known to man like it was the easiest thing in the world and the oft-forgotten Rourke/Joyce rhythm duo make a good case for why the backbone they provide is just as essential for the band as the other two guys. The Queen Is Dead is The Smiths at their purest: no distractions or experiments, just focus on what they were best known of. 

For a Smiths album The Queen Is Dead is shockingly consistent, both in quality and style. “Frankly Mr Shankly” and “Vicar in a Tutu” come closest to fluff, both being like short comedic interludes with tongue firmly planted in the cheek. But even they’re made out of the same elements that elevate the rest of the album and thus aren’t really a dip in quality – their brief levity is actually pretty fun.  The rest of the song selection runs the gamut from the rollicking rockers to the sweepingly dramatic melancholy, and everyone operating together at their respective peaks brings a tone throughout that makes the tracklist feel like it might as well be a best of. And it just as well could be: the title track, “I Know It’s Over”, “Cemetry Gates”, “Bigmouth Strikes Again”, “The Boy with the Thorn in His Side”, “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” and “Some Girls Are Bigger than Others” are all among The Smiths’ best cuts. That’s whopping 70% of the tracklist and even the one remaining track not yet listed, “Never Had No One Ever”, is pretty good. The presence of “There Is a Light that Never Goes Out” alone makes for a convincing case of The Queen Is Dead being The Smiths’ most essential record: it’s not just The Smiths’ best song but one of the greatest of all time in general, full of poetically morbid and self-awaredly ridiculous hopeless romanticism and with an absolutely pristine-perfect arrangement and performance to back it up. It’s the ultimate love anthem for all the people too cool to have love anthems.   

Meat Is Murder and Strangeways, Here We Come are more interesting as albums but The Queen Is Dead is the most instantly charming of The Smiths quadrilogy. It also stays that way and listening to further Smiths records rather just underlines how effortlessly lovely this one is. The only reason I’m not completely mad over it is, quite frankly, because The Smiths just never hit me on an emotionally personal level, like they do for many others: I admire, I appreciate and often I love but they never tug my soul like other acts do. But it’s easy to see why this has become their canon classic – it’s exactly what people want from The Smiths when they think about the band or read about their music, delivered in a fashion that perfectly matches their mythos.

Rating: 8/10

Car Seat Headrest - Teens of Style (2015)

1) Sunburned Shirts; 2) The Drum; 3) Something Soon; 4) Times to Die; 5) No Passion; 6) Psst, Teenagers, Take Off Your Clo; 7) Strangers; 8) Maud Gone; 9) Los Borrachos (I Don't Have Any Hope Left, But the Weather Is Nice); 10) Bad Role Models, Old Idols Exhumed (Psst, Teenagers, Put Your Clothes Back O); 11) Oh! Starving

Toledo and gang wave goodbye to the self-release days with a selection of re-recordings, and  have a whole lot of rockin' fun doing it.

Key tracks: "Something Soon", "Times to Die", "Strangers"

Teens of Style is the first proper Car Seat Headrest album, if we're being a bit glib about it. And we can be, comfortably. Part of Will Toledo's mythology is the knowledge that he started out with troves of haphazardly recorded EPs and albums thrown out into the world via Bandcamp, but it'll take a special type of obsessive at this point to backtrack through all those scruffy home recordings to find the good things worth more than a curious glance. I think Toledo's great and all, but I'm not that kind of obsessive, and while there are definitely reasons to look into some of those BC-era releases it gets a bit close to finding golden needles hiding in haystacks. 

Teens of Style was aimed for us lazy people. It's the first Car Seat Headrest record for an actual label, recorded in an actual studio, but it's intended to be a sort-of-not-really beginner's guide to Car Seat Headrest: a set of re-recordings of select songs from the Bandcamp days. It's not a best of - note how the tracklist contains nothing off either the canon darling Twin Fantasy or the actual best BC-era release How to Leave Town. Rather, it's a selection of Toledo's favourites which work well together and which could easily be given a longer lease in life through this kind of canonisation. It's intended to establish early Car Seat Headrest in a nutshell but with the benefit of accrued experience in tow, and the songs have been given a more consistent sound quality along the way - even if the production is intentionally still kept a little raw as a tribute to those old demos, including Toledo's voice being nearly unintelligible underneath all the vocal fuzz. It's the big boy version of Toledo making noise on his own, and thus an appropriate bridge between the two stages of Car Seat Headrest - closing off an era and starting the next by shifting songs from one to the other.

In doing so, Toledo has effectively released the ultimate version of all his teenage disillusionment and the need to escape from it. He outright states "I want to romanticise my headfuck" on "Something Soon", before shortly breaking down into another loud section of messy guitars and raw vocals. It's snapshots of breaking down in the bedroom and then celebrating surviving through it with every living fibre of your body, and it's made to sound like a hell of a lot of fun. The more far-reaching scopes of Toledo's songwriting are held back and rather than drawn-out dramatic epics, Style is a tighter set of shorter firecracker cuts, kept scrappy, snappy and loose. Feel-good foot-tapping rhythms, loud and distorted guitars and Toledo belting out his voice in full half the time come together to an album that's part punky teenage defiance, part party songs for slacker youths. It's playful too, with little interludes that throw a channel-hopping curve, the depression in the lyrics is laced with cheeky black humour and wink-and-nudge self-awareness, and the suddenly switching dynamics and little production twists (like the skip-start vocals halfway through "Times to Die") keep things a little positively unpredictable. Sure there's a lot of soul-searching and navel-gazing within the album, but it sounds wild and free and like it's having a blast, and that's the spirit of Teens of Style. It doesn't wallow in its problems, it rocks them out.

Despite the self-restrained confinements of Teens of Style - the lo-fi glamouring sound, the more direct material - it still packs a good amount of variety within it, extending its indie grooves into different branches effectively. The loud rock and roll of "Sunburned Shirts" and "The Drum" and the urgent escapist powerhouse "Something Soon" are the sound of a full band intent to get the crowd jumping, the chopped up indie disco hit "Times to Die" and the drum machine -driven mellow melancholy of "No Passion" are closer to Toledo on his own playing with his music software. "Los Borrachos" flicks wildly between slapdash synth pop exercises and the band joining in on a sudden burst of volume throughout, in one of the album's quirkier moments. "Maud Gone" is a lament; the part of the album where the album's recurrent subtexts finally reach the surface.With a simple organ riff and Toledo's wailing it becomes the big centrepoint ballad, the one respectful but solemn gaze onto the floor - it's both the right thing in the right place in terms of sequence but genuinely a gorgeous song, a minimalist late night ballad with an earnestness the rest of the album actively shies away from. "Oh! Starving" is the exact opposite, closing the album with an ostensibly silly farewell that could double up as a musical number, though it then transforms itself to match the rest of the album's aesthetics right before its final bow.

But "Strangers" needs to be singled out specifically. It's unassuming at first but it's a curveball, though even in its initial form it's impressive enough. Its melodic runs, the air-punching choruses full of boastful defiance and the subsequent instrumental bridges where the lackadaisical playing from the rest of the album is suddenly gone and replaced with a smoothly operating and incredibly tight unit - it all screams like it could be a genre classic, and nods at the more finely arranged material that would come later down the line. And then after the second chorus it goes for the jugular. Toledo uttering "When I was a kid I fell in love with Michael Stipe / I took lyrics out of context and thought he must be speaking to me" in one of the few lucid moments of the album where he's completely and perfectly audible, backed by an atypically brightly singing guitar melody, is such a moment on its own already, but Toledo uses it as a springboard. From there "Strangers" rises into a finale of wordless hollers, desperately pleading final verses and grand instrumental stands. It becomes the anthem it promised to be, and if the rest of the album slightly obscures Toledo's talent as a songwriter by its intentional aesthetic choices, this is where it's clearly pointed out. 

"Strangers" is the one big lofty-ambitioned classic of Teens of Style; the rest of the album doesn't even try to aim towards that direction. In the greater scheme of things the album is little more than an amuse bouche before the brand new material kicks in, a quickly recorded nod to the old fans done with the new ones in mind and a way to tease the actual First Big Budget Car Seat Album to come. And it's lovable in all that intentional scrappiness of it. Teens of Style wasn't meant to be anything with a greater meaning, but the songs are great, it's got gusto and charisma and the overall lackadaisy vibe is exhilarating. The word that keeps coming to my head over and over again is fun: it's an honest-to-god bouncy rock album from a source where you perhaps didn't expect one, but who deliver it excellently. If you consider this to be the "official" start of Toledo's discography, its destiny was always to be the kind of humble debut that is bound to be overshadowed by the albums the come; but the kind of record you'll shout about being underrated because it's just too charming to be buried beneath the other albums.

Rating: 8/10

Sea Wolf - Leaves in the River (2007)

1) Leaves in the River; 2) Winter Windows; 3) Black Dirt; 4) The Rose Captain; 5) Middle Distance Runner; 6) You’re a Wolf; 7) Song for the Dead; 8) Black Leaf Falls; 9) The Cold, the Dark & the Silence; 10) Neutral Ground

More cosy and comfortable singer/songwriter indie rocking, effectively an extension of the preceding EP. But maybe more isn't better in this case.

Key tracks: "Winter Windows", "You're a Wolf", "The Cold, the Dark & the Silence"

I have a soft spot for indie singer/songwriters and over the course of time I’ve heard a lot of them: my period of exponential musical growth happened to coincide with when it started getting easy for any musician to publish their music over the internet, and I’ve ended up gravitating towards a lot of guitars (often acoustic) plucking moody melodies. Some have become collection mainstays, countless others have faded back away as quickly as they appeared in the first place. Despite how I still have the actual physical CD, Alex Brown Church’s Sea Wolf outfit is much more closely aligned with the latter than it is with the former. Leaves in the River sounds instantly familiar, but it’s because it’s been recorded under countless different names by hundreds of artists and Church hasn’t really found his own voice - as a songwriter, lyricist or literally. 

He can write a good melody though. He’s generally a decent songwriter who goes through his soft indie folk in an enjoyable manner that makes for good background music, but now and then he busts out a song that shows he’s capable of much more as well. On Leaves in the River they’re “Winter Windows” and “The Cold, the Dark & the Silence” in particular, as they do what very little else on the album does and command attention as they grip with their hooks and entice with their decidedly different sounds compared to the rest of the album: the former stars organs and keyboards and sports a whimsical rhythm worlds away from the rest of the album, while the latter is carried by a steady processed beat and a jangly guitar. They both also push out a different, more evocative kind of charisma from the normally a bit too calm and collected Church. “You’re a Wolf”, the cello-accentuated, quickly-paced highlight of the pre-album EP Get to the River Before It Runs Too Low finds its second home here in a completely unchanged form and becomes the album’s heart and centre point. All three jump and stand out from the general peaceful lull of the rest of the album: one where pretty but nondescript melodies are gently picked under a smooth vocal. It makes for nice rainy day listening but falls short of grasping any personal hold.

This wasn’t really an issue on the aforementioned Get to the River Before It Runs Too Low EP because its brief length and the resulting focus didn’t allow it to crop up. The album is more of the same that the EP offered in sound and style, just with a little more polish in production which you can notice, but can’t say if it’s for better or worse. On paper that sounds like a winning formula, but in full length format the relative ‘ordinariness’ Sea Wolf slips into is accentuated. You can’t really criticise the album – or Church for that matter – for it, but it makes it hard to squeeze any great detail out of it either.

Leaves in the River has an earnestness and warmth to it that arguably makes it the best one out of the Sea Wolf full-lengths, so it has that going on for it. Considering it’s a pleasant listen, damning it with faint praise feels mean – unfortunately, it’s just not gripping enough to have ever elevated into anything more over the years.

Rating: 6/10