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NBHAP Rating: 4/5
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[one_half last=”yes”]SEAPONY
A Vision
Release-Date: 31.07.2015
Label: Self-Released
Tracklist:
01. Saw the Light
02. Bad Dream
03. Couldn’t Be
04. Everyday All Alone
05. Hollow Moon
06. Let Go
07. A Place We Can Go
08. Go Nowhere
09. In Heaven
10. New Circle
11. A Vision
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Switch on dream mode again
SEAPONY had the kind of start in life that most fledgling bands fantasise about. Formed when Danny Rowland and Jenny Weidl moved to Seattle in 2010 and teamed up with Rowland’s former bandmate Ian Brewer, things sped up when their single Dreaming was picked up by outlets like Pitchfork. Two LPs, Go With Me and Falling, swiftly followed. However, things then ground to a halt as fatigue set in, Weidl explaining that ‘Once we started playing a bunch of shows, we found it was causing too much unnecessary stress [and] it started to frizzle out’. A two-year hiatus helped re-energise the band, and with the addition of percussionist Aaron Voros they’ve returned for album three, A Vision.
Shimmering pop symphonies
Opener Saw The Light gives a good idea of what’s to follow: jangly guitars combine with rattling drum beats and Weidl’s wide-eyed vocal – ‘I saw the light, go on for miles’. Everyday All Alone has a kind of elegant melancholy about it, a life report of isolation backed up with shimmery guitar riff, while the ghost of WEEZER’s Island in the Sun hangs heavily around the opening bars of Bad Dream. Essentially, it’s an album of eleven tracks of chilled, breezy indie-pop, from the weary fragility of Go Nowhere to the surfy guitar waves and pretty harmonies of the closing title track A Vision.
A sparkling hidden gem
In an era where everyone is perpetually looking for ideas for their next thinkpiece, there’s a tendency to rush to records that you can approach at an angle, to demand that everything has some extra dimension attached. That means that records like this one, which is essentially a re-tread, albeit an extremely well-executed re-tread of a well-worn formula in lo-fi indie, get overlooked. But that’s unfair to A Vision, and to other similarly under-appreciated lo-fi records like last years’ Careers by BEVERLY and the self-titled debut by ALVVAYS. A Vision isn’t anything revolutionary, but it’s a well-written album full of breezy melodies so well-suited to the beach that you can almost smell the salt. And with a month of the summer still left, it’s easy to appreciate that.
A Vision isn’t about to revolutionise the music world anytime soon, but it’s loaded with summery indie melodies and hazy, lo-fi sweetness. SEAPONY’s return is a comeback made good.
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