There's something about The Courage of Others that feels deep. Taking its cues from both 60s folk and the more prog/apocalyptic streams that have flowed through the intervening decades, it's a record that's about texture much more than melody (and in that respect something of a contrast to its predecessor The Trials of Van Occupanther; there's certainly nothing on it with the immediacy or sweet tunefulness of cuts like "Roscoe" or the title track from that other).
The music on it is richly detailed, but subtly so - it's easy to miss the layered harmonies and carefully constructed resonances between the different instrument and vocal parts, and the rises and falls in the songs, while providing important dynamic variation, are generally built of several more lines and layers than is initally apparent. I haven't made up my mind about how good The Courage of Others is - for mine, it falters in the mid-section and becomes a bit too murkily homogenous - but it's a real record, and in high points like "Winter Dies" and "Core of Nature" it hits some genuine peaks.
