Across the River of Stars by Beachwood Sparks–Album Review.
Across the River of Stars by Beachwood Sparks–Album Review.
After twelve years without a release, Beachwood Sparks return to the scene with Across the River of Stars, a nine-track LP that comes in at just under thirty minutes long. Of course, Beachwood Sparks are known for their signature blend of psychedelic pop and traditional folk music of the American South, an unusual espousal the band mastered to critical acclaim with their 2001 album titled Once We Were Trees. That unique sound is still present here, Beachwood Sparks calmly manages to stitch some twang into a project that leans more heavily into echoey rock-based, Marc Bolan-esque ballads, certainly peeling back a great deal from the honkey-tonk tinge of their earlier work.
“My Love, My Love” serves as a rushed greeting to the album, an incredibly fast-paced instrumental that lasts for most of the track before crashing into a slower, drifting tune about a lover heading home to their beloved, using the stars to get them there. “Torn in Two” is the least country track on the album, and perhaps that’s not an accident because the lyrics are more concerned with environmentalism and our treatment of the planet than other tracks. This song shreds, the guitar wretches in place of punctuation when a verse ends and the synth and piano glide on the back of the rhythm guitar strumming under the pleas of the lyrics.
“Falling Forever” is a surfer take on a western ballad, a righteous lead guitar plays staccato over the two-note alternating bass, strummy rhythm guitar, and high-hat heavy drum section. The narrator expresses a nihilistic philosophy towards life over top of all of this, a guy who feels like he’s been falling forever and just doesn’t care anymore. The song closes out with a synthesizer and violin, which had been mixed down and nearly unnoticeable for most of the track, intermingling in a haunting call and response.
“Gentle Samurai” is an easy song. It’s inoffensive and the most blatantly single-worthy cut on the LP. It’s decorated with more than enough “Oohs” and “Aahs” from backup vocalists to make it tacky and turns a frustratingly meaningless combination of words into its catchy chorus.
The simplicity of “Gem” works in its favor, the song revolves around the interplay between a piano and a guitar. The feedback these instruments give each other during the buildup of this song is relaxing and sentimental while the drums maintain the momentum of the piece until they become the noisy focal point at the crescendo. The lyrics thematically reflect the simplicity of the arrangements, a lover tells the oldest truism of finding solace in love, despite having fear and uncertainty about the rest of life.
“Faded Glory” drifts on a ‘drunk and dancing with someone who isn’t the one you’re thinking about’ sort of tone. The synth in the back of the mix complements the slide on the guitar, and in fact, the production allows every instrument on this cut to complement and melt into one another nicely.
“Dolphin Dance” is one of only a few songs on the album where the pace is up, and a nice little pocket gets found real quick in the march between the lead guitar and the bass, and it gets kept in the pocket- for how simple the bass tends to be on this album, it pulls a lot of weight. Sonically, this is one of the more interesting cuts on the album, with a particularly skillful performance from the drum section.
Emily Badgley
“High Noon” is another in a string of dreamy moonlight waltz’ on the B-side of this album. It’s a story about a man who offers to hang himself for a woman, speaking regretfully about his past, about wanting what he already had but that his insatiable expectations kept him from having.
“Wild Swans” ends the album as a synth-heavy easy piece that lifts the tone back up from suicide to more of the psychedelic environmental observations that comprise so much of this album.
The focus of this project can, at times, seem unclear, with lyrics that range from the subject of loneliness and love to environmentalism. However, the band’s performances are so cohesive that there’s an identity to this album, which brings consistency throughout its runtime. Beachwood Sparks know exactly what they’re doing at this point, and they do it so scarcely that releases from them are momentous. So, with a genre as unique and unpopulated as psychedelic country music, this album is worth listening to, if that sounds interesting.
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