I started listening to this in earnest on the skybus on the way to the airport and it's been my main soundtrack since, in airports, on planes (thank you noise-cancelling earphones) and here in Zanzibar, including often on the starry beach at night - all of which is very apt, as maybe even more than Lost in the Dream this is music for expanses and journeys and the figurative wide open road.
Sure, at times it can begin to sound just a tiny bit formulaic - yearning verses, windswept atmospherics (at times there's a hint of the Church there), epic electric guitar, probably some 'woahs' or 'yeahs' in the back end - but it stands up to repeated listening and besides who cares when the lane they've found for themselves is so great. "Strangest Thing" is the one that I get stuck on, the whole sweep of it undeniable, and then there's the little details like the repeated single pinprick pulse that makes me think of lights dotting landscapes moving far away. But the three songs that come before it (and open the record), "Up All Night", "Pain" and "Holding On" are basically just as good, and so is the emphatic rock and roll of "In Chains" a bit later.
All in all, the right kind of record not only for travel, but for ringing out a year - what luck for me to have come to it at just the right time.
Sure, at times it can begin to sound just a tiny bit formulaic - yearning verses, windswept atmospherics (at times there's a hint of the Church there), epic electric guitar, probably some 'woahs' or 'yeahs' in the back end - but it stands up to repeated listening and besides who cares when the lane they've found for themselves is so great. "Strangest Thing" is the one that I get stuck on, the whole sweep of it undeniable, and then there's the little details like the repeated single pinprick pulse that makes me think of lights dotting landscapes moving far away. But the three songs that come before it (and open the record), "Up All Night", "Pain" and "Holding On" are basically just as good, and so is the emphatic rock and roll of "In Chains" a bit later.
All in all, the right kind of record not only for travel, but for ringing out a year - what luck for me to have come to it at just the right time.
