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Music

SEAGULL – Ocean From Above

It’s haunting, it’s mystical, it’s slightly depressing, it’s basically like being in a Brannan filtered Instagram image of an uninhabited forest. Melbourne band, SEAGULL, make that dark, ominous kind of indie-folk that encourages emotional epiphanies. Their most recent album Ocean From Above (2013) was produced by front-man Chris Bolton and is executed with raw, apocalyptic beauty.

seagull band

Enter opening song Ruby, whose thought-provoking lyrics gives you hope that someone else out there is into your shitty taste in movies and will love you for who you are… One day. The minimal backings coupled with Bolton’s raw vocals are pretty intense throughout the album and reminiscent of a more simplistic Gareth Liddiard or early, acoustic Shins. Original Shape uses deliberate and careful lyrics to effortlessly convey its message of an imminent, unavoidable breakup and is driven by uneasy background silences.

Anhedonia, although blatantly devastating, was a highlight of the album for me. Bolton describes it as sounding “like it’s being played underwater” and I couldn’t agree more. This leads us through the album crescendo Unclaimed Luggage and It’s Spring to a final 7 minute confrontation, Broth. It showcases Boltons classical training through intervals of intense clarinet and light guitar. The song manages to build a deliberate, emotional tension that left me impossibly despondent, yet hopeful.

SEAGULL will hopefully be touring Sydney real soon, and after listening to their entire back catalogue I can make an educated suggestion that you don’t miss it.

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