The Exit Bags
A Fear of Open Water
Sputnikmusic 80点相当
カナダ アルバータ州エドモントン出身の
スローコア/ノイズ/シューゲイザー/フォーク
3rd
A Fear of Open Water is, in the words of its creator Mike James, “sort of an anthology of opaque memories from my childhood” and deals with an attempted coming to terms with a traumatic event from those years. He speaks of sifting through social worker reports trying to piece together the whole of it, this thing unspoken to us, the outsiders, and certainly incompletely known to the victim, a toddler. Opaque is the right word. The music boils lo-fi indie, swirling, droning ambience, and harsh noise into a package that is many things, but not seizing. The lyrics are cryptic, intimating harsh sorrows, but never with the detail for us, again the outsiders, to know. One hopes a light has shone on something for James in all this.
And yet there is a pull to know. It’s not as if the music isn’t arresting in its depressive droning. The gently plucked guitar passages are never vigorous, but the notes always feel perfectly chosen somehow, especially on a track like “You Left and I’m Going Through the Motions” that manages to be an earworm seemingly against all odds. “Joust” feels like an indie single chopped apart and put together again. The chorusing of “one day you could feel better than you’ve ever felt” could have been something anthemic in a different context, with different feelings behind it, but here it is insistent, against all other forces. Static-y bursts cut in and out, halting.
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