dan's jams - music reviews

Sprawling and introspective, leaning into the future and gazing fondly at the past, Allen Epley's "The Life and Times" project has created a masterful work of mood (both good and bad) and energy (all good) that keeps me enthralled with it's brilliance. From the opening haunting melody lines of "My Last Hostage" that pay tribute to My Bloody Valentine without cheapening their memory (yeah i said MEMORY, grow up and face it, kids) to the wistully and occassionally punchy balladic "A Chorus of Crickets", this album takes you to so many places, so many thoughts and feelings that maybe you've had and maybe you haven't about the halcyonity of youth past, and still leaves a candle for belief in a future that's doesn't outright suck.

Those familiar with Shiner will recognize Allen's songwriting immediately, but will also understand that all is change, progression and regression, and artisitcally, neither is necessarily better than the other. These songs are generally simpler (you will not occassionally feel the need of a slide rule to "get it") yet still fresh and exciting.

My favorites here include "Thrill Ride", a murky song you can close your eyes and imagine youself on a perfectly soundless rollercoaster ride, in a soundless lightning storm, quiet bombs landing all around in violent flashes of muffled fire, as you realize a macro view of life that the most horrible traumas you may face are still all a part of the living experience. "Shift Your Gaze", with it's melody and harmony stilted high upon a simple 1 2 3 4 drumbeat that drifts into a chorus that pays homage to it's verses. "Skateland" whiffs passively and pleasently of greasy kid stuff memories and hot summers and how some things used to be, a lazy barely harmonized melody and a break away that puts your memory in reverse only to fast forward through the good parts...ah, Alison, the retarded things we used to do, with your parents a thin wall away.

Spiralling and gorgeous without pretention and egotism, deep and moving all the way down it's deepest and most moving cuts. Well done.

Is halcyonity a word? Balladic? Fuck it.