An Alluring New Album From lifegarden
An album release from lifegarden manages to put together elements of emotional drive, wonderfully Lush bouts of honesty, dream rock, and a vast undertone, all rolled up into this one beautiful record that gives so much to the listener that you become attached to the personalities behind the songs.
The Ecology, Love & Existential Dread album is packed with more than a few surprises around the corners, and this beautiful underbelly that you get engulfed by.
The soundscape is part of what wraps itself around you and keeps you right where it wants to. You have a heavy rock sound some of the time, but others, you still have this floatiness that seems to grab at you, and when you let it, it invites you to flow right alongside the sounds you're listening to.
A lot of these songs encompass both of those feelings and sounds, and tracks like "Before You're Dead" are a perfect example of exactly that.
This is an album that has a lot to say as well. As I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of bouts of honesty coming through and tons of inner thoughts that come spilling out for everyone to soak up.
This makes the record come through with these waves of intensity at different times, and this also builds on that whole cinematic tonality that the record brings with it.
Now, if I had to call it one thing, I would say it is dream Rock because it has the air of spaciousness and expansive undertone, but it also has an almost grungy rock approach as well.
Even when songs are heavy hitting or harder, you still have a sort of reverb effect on the whole track, so they still have a floatiness to them lurking just beneath the surface.
It's not exactly shoegaze, although there are elements of the genre all throughout the record.
This is an album with a slew of different influences that come into play at different times, and it's also a record that I suggest listening to all the way through from start to finish in one shot.
Listening to one or two songs from the album may give you some kind of idea of what you may expect for the rest of it, but it will not give you anywhere near the full spectrum or range that the album has to offer as a whole.
This record provides a bit of an experience if you ask me. It pulls you away from wherever you are and whatever you're doing and puts you in an entirely different place for a chunk of time.
One of the other things I really enjoyed about this album was the energy levels.
At times, it felt like some of these songs were recorded live on the floor and everyone was just feeding off of each other's energies the entire time, giving the record this alive and breathing feeling.
Of course, I wasn't there, so I'm not sure if it was recorded that way, but listening to the record makes you want to go see them live simply because if they can capture that kind of energy and aesthetic on a record like this, then seeing them live must be amazing.
This album gives a beautifully unique experience that combines the emotional drive of the human experience and a robust but vast soundscape that you end up falling right into.
Those two elements seem to go hand in hand throughout the record and make it unique.
You can tell this is coming from a band who have a real love for their craft. When I say that, I don't mean playing their instruments or singing, I mean writing songs together that have an impact.
The guitar tones are always floating around the heavier but driftier sounds and tones, the drums are alive and give the songs a bit of added drive, but are never super over the top. Everything is dynamically exactly where it needs to be so that the aesthetic of the record comes through as it should.
The vocals are performed with a great passion and some heart, and I think that's why that emotional drive comes through so authentically.
You can't have songs like these without a solid vocal performance, and the vocalist here really puts a lot into those performances, even on the record itself.
This was a gorgeous record that gave a lot of layers and textures to soak in, so I suggest listening to it in full, but also doing it with headphones on or at least loudly.
There are a lot of elements, tones, and textures that float through the ethers of some of the songs, and you really need to soak those in to grab everything it's offering.
At any rate, take a deep dive into this track as soon as you can, see what kind of moods it creates for you, because this is what the record does. It creates moods and you latch on to those.
