The Unwinding Hours

The Unwinding Hours

(Chemikal Underground)

Record Review by Marcel Feldmar

A new band, a familiar sound. Drifts of ocean guitar waves crash out from this new project brought to light by Craig B and Iain Cook of Aereogramme. This could be a continuation, but it feels more like a new beginning.

The first song is full and lush and orchestrated, bringing to mind mellower Mogwai moments, and while it almost feels like a sprawling sonic instrumental, the vocals glide through perfectly tied by the surrounding notes. The word “glide” is key here, I think. It’s heavy, but lazy, and the sparse steadiness of the drums just let the build come from the chords, and it floats you up above it all.

The next song, “Tightrope,” signals a movement away from the thickness of the opening track, moving with an almost Mojave 3 beauty towards a slow folk sadness, but this isn’t folk music, it’s the blues.

There is a wonderful acoustic movement to these songs, pulling at the old heart strings, and the sadness that flows, flows steady, held at a distance by the length of the guitar. Let it get any closer, and the melancholy would be almost too much. This is the breaking apart of souls, the ending of stories, the wreckage within relationships. All of this is held tightly, and then released with forgiveness and understanding. There is hope, there is the knowledge that some things are better when you struggle through. The song “There Are Worse Things Than Being Alone” is all of that, the initial slow sadness that builds like a broken heart into a mess of noise and distortion, and then fades into a slow note of goodbye. Elegant and devastating.

Goodbye, I’m leaving now, before I can’t take it anymore. There are better things than this ahead, and I’m going to sing it out until I’m happy again.

Halfway through the album we reach “Solstice”, which still holds the sorrow, but here it is surrounded by the perfect light of an early morning sunrise. Wistful and romantic, and then there is a shadow that falls heavy upon “Peaceful Liquid Shell”.  Dark, and unforgiving, and filling slowly against the dynamic with a bright undercurrent of keyboards. Things may be dark, but as Iain sings above it, “Let it be known that I am well…” you know that that darkness has been accepted, and beauty has been woven from its chords.

Sometimes, I get hints of a slight Wilco sound. Those moments of purity that fall between the verses on an album like Summerteeth. While the first half of the album has that light guitar feel, the second half falls into a slightly more experimental territory. Even the drums sound depressed. Hard and solid, keeping that beat, but weighted with the knowledge of what has gone before. This album is a celebration of all that is miserable and wonderful and living between us.