Lung cycles by Lung cycles

"I want to say this is Lung Cycles' first full-length collection of songs in five years, but the word "song" feels out of place. A song implies a singer at center stage, a voice that plays ruler of the song's little kingdom. There's something deist about these new songs, as if the musicians are setting them up and then sneaking away quietly while the music continues to play. Lung Cycles aren't erasing themselves from the picture, but they're not imposing themselves on you either. They're giving themselves the freedom to move into the background and observe the play of light and color and shadow, savoring the loose embrace of a warm night, making their richly textured collective dreams responsive to the outside world's serendipity.

Even though Ben Lovell says few words on this album, his delivery is composed and deliberate, and even his silences are articulate. He sings about anxiety and frustration, but he does it in the voice of hard-won calm. It's like he's speaking softly to a confidant late at night, recounting the strains of the day while acknowledging the need to let them go. Perhaps he's just talking to himself while he's on a mind-clearing walk, the kind he mentions in "Blue Rochester moon." Even if he is, the outlook here is profoundly sane. Underneath the shallowness of our modern perpetual stress complex, we can find verdant nooks like this, as long as we can slow ourselves enough to notice them. This is a nook worth noticing."

-Emmerich Anklam

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