Avalanches Find a New World on Wildflower Single “Colours”
There has always been understandable subjective reasoning against the prospect of Avalanches LP2—nostalgia, for one. And there has also been the concern that Since I Left You was the record Avalanches were put on this earth to make and anything that doesn’t meet its impossible standards—i.e., anything—would inevitably detract from its perfection.
But the most valid concern is purely logistical. While hip-hop acts and singer-songwriters have more means of advancing beyond their sampledelic masterpieces due to their lyrics or personality (see: Odelay, Three Feet High and Rising, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Paul’s Boutique), Avalanches’ limitations are more tied up in the law. It ain’t 2000 anymore, and if Car Seat Headrest is in trouble for one ill-fated interpolation, what kind of liability insurance would these guys need to take out? And an Avalanches track without samples wouldn’t be their version of “Unplugged.” It might as well be their “4’33”.”
But hey, all samples cleared on “Colours”! Because there are none, or at least that’s what Avalanches say. It’s hard to know how to identify the Avalanches as musicians—maybe producers, certainly not a band—but in the spirit of Wildflower‘s getaway of a second single, “animators” seems fitting. We’ll have to take Avalanches’ word that the wobbly acoustic guitars, the backmasked vocals, and every implacable synthesizer went directly from their hands to tape in the 21st century. This includes the vocals of Jonathan Donahue, the most daring reanimation project of “Colours.”
Donahue speaks with the same pure mood crystal mysticism of the recent Mercury Rev records and finds a context in which he sounds downright earthbound. “Where do all the mermaids go?” he asks, getting lost in the “urban surf” of nightlife, watching the bars close down and hoping, wishing that “everybody’s got their somewhere,” including him. Explicit sadness, narrative songwriting, no samples, guest vocalists—this isn’t Since I Left You and yet it’s not exactly a different feeling. They found a world so new.
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