There’s a ton of good albums that came out this year that I enjoyed but never got around to writing about. A few of them are so good that they’ll make my year-end list. So I may put off covering them until that (unless I really get into the writing mood). But there’s also another group of solid-but-not-spectacular records that won’t make the list, but deserve a little bit of attention.
So my project for the next week or so, while I’m compiling that final list, is to cover all the ones that won’t quite make it. I’ll be abandoning my usual strategy of using 1000 words when 50 might suffice. So if you sometimes get sick of wading through all my prose, this is the time to get the short-and-sweet reviews for the year.
The River – Anathallo
First on the list is Canopy Glow, the new record from Anathallo. I know Taylor gets annoyed at people reviewing this record and referencing Sufjan. That said, it’s just too easy so I’m going to do it anyways. Sorry. Lush instrumentation from a wide array (including the ever-more-rare autoharp), choir-like backing vocals, songs that spiral up and up and up until they’re so large that they write themselves in luminous letters all across the sky…
The Sufjan references aren’t a bad thing. Like I said in my last post about The Gaslight Anthem, just because you walk along a path laid by an earlier artist doesn’t make your work derivative. There’s a strong case to be made for artists that can create new textures and meanings out of a sound that was very good to start with. And that’s what Canopy Glow does. It’s not as effervescent or heart-piercing as Illinois, but what could be?
If there’s a flaw, it’s the tendency of a number of tracks to drift off a bit (something the Pitchfork review actually gets spot-on). There’s nice stuff going on conceptually all across the record, but the best songs (“The River,” “All the First Pages,” and “Noni’s Field”) are the ones with an insistence that pushes you forward. The second half of “The River” in particular is the finest piece of music they’ve yet created.
Canopy Glow is the sort of record that’s intricate and fascinating enough that I find myself listening to it more than some other records I probably like more in a strict sense. For that reason, it has potential to be a grower. For now, though, I don’t think it’s going to find a place in my favorite records of the year.