Archive for the ‘The Calm Blue Sea’ Category
The Calm Blue Sea
The Calm Blue Sea is a post-rock band from Austin, Texas, who recently released their debut self-titled album this year. They can probably be considered one of the biggest emerging bands of post-rock, and I think that’s a pretty justifiable stance. This album itself is very enjoyable and pretty much in the likes of of post-rock legends like Explosions in the Sky and Mogwai. In my opinion, their album is pretty mainstream and there is very little that could be defined as their sound, apart from what I’ll be reviewing. Being their debut album, however, leaves the band with plenty of chances to define their music more concretely in the future.
When I try to think of what encompasses The Calm Blue Sea’s music, I would have to say their preference for rhythmic changes and pretty catchy riffs, often simple piano and guitar melodies. The piano playing sort of has a new-age melody to it, and the guitar is often a clean finger-picked melody, often accompanied by the full band if distorted. I also noticed some piano melody-over-guitar melody, which is a pretty awesome instrumentation play in my opinion. In terms of rhythmic changes, the band uses the regular post-rock regimen of the quiet-loud dynamic, often starting a track with a soft piano or guitar melody, then slowly adding to the repertoire bass, synths, and percussions. In almost all the tracks, you’ll hear not once, but twice (even thrice), abrupt but gapless rhythmic changes. I personally love these, because I think it adds to the dynamics of a band’s music, but too much of this makes me expect it and become dependent on a certain routine.
In each song, the gapless changes are consistent so that you don’t know where one ends and another begins. The transitions are so meticulously thought out, which make the songs stand out as very well-produced and well-organized. For example, “The Rivers that Run Beneath This City” has an entirely new sound to it at the 5:20 minute mark, making you think that it’s a new track entirely, but it brings it back to the original sequence near the end of the piece. This reinforces the idea of a gapless dynamic in its consistency.
While I feel that the music fits into what I’d consider mainstream post-rock, there are some features I think stand out from the regular. The track, “After the Legions” has a bit of a dark, dreamscape feel to it. There are some vocals in “Literal,” sort of unintelligible at times, kind of like Mogwai.
It’s pretty good album; again I think the band needs to define their sound a little more, but otherwise I really enjoyed it.
