Storm Chronicles 2013
Seattle duo cast a glance inside themselves to ascend beyond the pale.
Looking Backward
“Your heart is a noble work of art, you’d never be wrong to fall apart,” states “Cast In Faith,” a buzzing centerpiece of this band’s debut album. In gestation for about two decades and released as a result of crowdfunding, the record reflects David Burr’s melodious belief and is a translucent song cycle that takes in the lighter strains of prog rock and colors it darkly, in a romantic way. Playing all the instruments here, Burr opens the gate into his world with the shimmer and dimmed riffs of “Still Breathing” before Jody Dietz’s voice grounds the atmosphere with the title track’s first part which proposes a walk down the memory lane in the web of soaring guitar lines and piano vignettes married to a lazy club-like beat that unfurls into a living tapestry, while the second one dissolves in a new-age slow motion and male vocals join in.
Elsewhere, funky strum squares the catchy “Corners” on the disco dancefloor before cosmic synthesizers lead the groove into space, yet “Ghost Writer” blooms on a soulful introspection contrasting with the short ivory blitz in its riveting midst. Yet it’s “Run” that binds all the elements together with its prominent bass and offers heavily blissful, if not exactly footloose but elegant to its classical core, escapism until “Individual” takes the psyche-wander home as warmly and delicately as it gets at the end of the day, although not without some thunder. That’s the time to look back and wonder, and that’s the time for the band to follow this route further.
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