A Flowing and Cinematic Release from Watercolored
A beautiful new record from Watercolored hits with such a warm and expansive atmosphere and soundscape that the whole thing feels almost like a dream when listened to from start to finish.
The album produces such a gorgeous set of textures that are layered on top of each other and build these flowing and vast tones that you end up getting engulfed by it all, then finally washed away with it in the end.
The Tears of the Sea album blends elements of cinematic pop, orchestrated underbellies, acoustic pop, and elements of folk, all combining together to build this atmosphere. Once you're there, in that atmosphere, you don't want to leave.
There's a lot of honesty in the storytelling and emotional drive behind some of these songs, but the whole thing feels almost fantastical because of the way the music is built.
Songs like "Ocean Stream" give us a great glimpse of this vastness in the undertone of the songwriting, but also some of the folk and acoustic pop elements as well. This is one of the songs that blends all of the orchestration, pop, and dreaminess extremely well.
A lot of the tracks also have these synth pads that float through ethers and create that depth while also featuring acoustic guitar on the upfront, creating a more personal, almost one-on-one feel, all while delivering lyrics that are connected a lot of the time.
You can hear a lot of that honesty in the lyrics throughout the entire record, and some songs even paint vivid pictures in your head as they unfold.
Songs like "The Chase" deliver such great and almost metaphorical descriptions, and I find it alluring how the record blends honest inner thought with that metaphorical approach.
This is also a track that displays some experimental sides, even more than the norm that you hear on the record. There are synthesizers and keys on this track that are a little bit more trippy or psychedelic, some would say. This adds a completely different vibe or texture to the song, all those still feeling sort of drippy and very spacious.
The ambient tones are the reason why these songs can wrap themselves around you.
This is an album that you swim through, and as you do, you soak in all these beautiful sounds, tones, and textures.
Although listening to a few songs may give you an idea of what you can expect on the record, it will not give you the full spectrum of what the entire album has to offer.
In my opinion, this is a record you listen to in full. Diving into this record from start to finish, and one shot, is absolutely the best way to listen to this release.
The record spans basically 11 tracks running about 45 minutes long, and if you start from that first introductory track and just go through the whole record, you're in for an amazing experience.
Again, this feels like a dream. But it only feels that way if you listen to the entire thing.
This album pulls you away from wherever you are and puts you in a different space for a good little chunk of time, and to me, that's kind of a beautiful thing because you don't get it often.
The vocals are beautifully done throughout this record. They do display a lot of heart, and the record boasts bits of vulnerability here and there, which I enjoyed because it just makes it all the more authentic.
You can tell a lot of these songs came from a real place. What gets you is how they are portrayed lyrically, along with the musical moods that are set for you.
It's a very moody record. There are waves of intensities that sort of come and go, but the whole thing again has a natural flow to it that you can indeed float alongside.
That's what this is meant for. This record is an experience, meant to be listened to in full.
This is a factor that I thoroughly enjoy because, again, it's kind of a rarity these days, so hearing an album that you are absolutely supposed to soak in all at once is a wonderful thing to experience once again.
You can tell that there is plenty of attention to detail that went into the creation of this album. There was a beautiful production, where everything felt very orchestrated, but still natural.
It was lush, charismatic, honest, dreamy, and it had this subtle softness that strangely puts you at peace at times.
If you listen to the album with headphones on, you can grasp all of those textures and layers happening.
Then you get this immense experience, and when it's over, you have to reacclimate back to your world again.
You can't ask for much more when it comes to an album like this.
Some would call this dream pop, others would call it acoustic pop, I call it cinematic pop because that aesthetic is heavy-handed throughout the entire record.
Take a listen to this album, again, do it all the way through and with headphones on, and see how it affects you, because it will affect you.
