Music Reviews

I’m gonna be honest here for a second, I was kind of a sucker for Hayley’s last project „Pedals For Armor“, where she experimented with more electronic and funk elements and it overall made for a pretty messy yet enjoable collection of songs – but with this new record over here, I had kind of a hard time getting into it, beacuse of the different sound palate this album is obviously going for – I gave it like listens but nothing ws clicking with me – one time I even fell asleep by like the third song and woke by the end of the album. But yesterday I gave it a patient, uninterupted listen and it finally clicked – this album has actually much more going for it, the it may sound, it’s just not as immidiate as Petals was.

Right of the back, the mood is set with the opener „First Thing To Go“, which is a somber song with some gentle guitar plucks and a piano lead that works its way in in the second half – it’s a really nice way to show off the sound this album is going for. The second track „My Libm“ showcases more of the same, with a more psychedelic chorus and actual drums, which are a rarity on this album, most of the song being just soulely accoustic ballads. Though „Asystole“ is another song to break the formula with more detailed and textured instrumental and beautiful melodies – i adds more variety in the tracklisting. Now from this point on, the tracklist gets a little stale after a while – as I said, this album doesn’t have much else going for it than the gentle plucking at you heart strings accoustic ballads, so it gets kind of unintresting after a while. Some exceptions to this include „KYRH“ standing for „Keep You Right Here“, which switches things up, but not by much, instead of a regular accoustic guitar ballad you get a piano-centred ballad – execution is different, but the outcome is the same. Now I’m not saying any of these songs are not made from a genuine place of love and have no artistic depth to them, they certainly have, but it’s all very personal, as Hayley sings about her past relationship expiriences and I personally just don’t relate to much of anything here. Also the tracklisting uses a fair ammount of ambience to fill in the void that surrouds many of the songs here and it works fairly well, great examples being „Good Grief“ and „HYD“. I also thought the song „Over Those Hills“ deserves a mention as it is one of the most, if not the most, instrumentaly rich song here – it starts off basically like any other song here, but slowly builds tention throughout until finally exploding in the final third – the sharp drums and electric guitar are a breath of fresh air. The second to last track „Descansos“ is purely an instrumental ambient piece, with Hayley’s distant background vocals giving the track a really chilling atmosphere. Now I guess the closer „Just a Lover“ does tie things up together pretty well lyrically and even instrumentally as the track offers more much needed instrument variety again. Overall nothing groundbreaking but a great closer nonethenless.

So yeah, there just isn’t much to be said about this project really – it obviously comes from a very personal place and I can appriciate that, but I just don’t stay invested in this feeling all the way through and the album is kind of all over the place – still a nice little release from Hayley, definetly an easier and more easy-going listen then her debut LP, but not much more enjoyable.

Decent 6/10