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Review: 'Astronauts'
'End Codes'   

-  Album: 'End Codes' -  Label: 'Lo Recordings'
-  Genre: 'Folk' -  Release Date: '6th May 2016'

Our Rating:
Following on from his solo debut as Astronauts, Dan Carney has set the bar high. It’s not really a case of the ‘difficult’ second album, though, given that he released three previous albums with Dark Captain (Light Captain), and the two projects represent a continuum, rather than a change I direction to speak of.

There’s a dappled hue of melancholy cast through a filter of 60s psychedelia on the album’s opening track, ‘Recondition’, familiar to anyone familiar with his previous output, and Carney sings plaintive, weary, wistful: ‘you get so sick and you get so tired and it’s gone’ over a laid-back acoustic strum and dripping piano. Single cut ‘Civil Engineer’ picks up the pace, and presents a quintessentially Dan Carney blend of subtle, needing electronic twinkling tones and delicate, nagging acoustic guitars.

‘Dead Snare’ contains some of Carney’s most barbed lyrics to date, and it’s hard not to wonder who they’re directed at, and if they may be aimed inwardly as he asks ‘why’s he singing those stupid songs? / why can’t he just do the ones from before? / I’ve half a mind to finish him off / why’s he thrown it all aside / when we’ve given him all that healing / when we’ve been nothing but kind? / when we’ve been nothing but caring?’ As the piano and strings swell over the characteristic acoustic guitar repetition, Carney tackles the issue straight on: ‘He’s part of the process, he’s part of the chain / he’s part of the problem, and he’s part of the pain’. It’s all in the delivery, of course. Carney always sounds laid back, but often bitter, while remaining eloquent and articulate.

Marking a contrast to his more barbed lyrical swipe, Carney sounds so chilled as to be almost stoned on the ultra-mellow ‘You Can Turn it Off,’ at the same time referencing The Cure’s ‘Close to Me’ in the glockenspiel motif.

‘A Break in the Code, A Cork in the Stream’, introduces a denser, murkier sound, a slower, thicker and hypnotic song that stretches out over six minutes, the piano toward the back of the mix while everything whirls into an enveloping slow sonic whirl. ‘Breakout’ is a claustrophobic composition built on shuffling beats and awkward, dissonant keys, and continues the lyrical obsession with tiredness despite its urgency.

As is often the case with Carney’s output, both in his previous iteration with Dark Captain and since as Astronauts, there are points when you may find the songs have drifted by with minimal impression, and yet in no time you’ll realise the songs are embedded in your cerebrum and will want to play the whole album again. And again. This is very much the case with ‘End Codes’, an album bursting with easy-going, hazy melodies. So often, thee tracks pivot on a single key change or an emerging layer of instrumentation. It’s all about the details.

These are not immediate songs, but songs which need to be chewed over, digested. There’s so much detail, not least of all in the tiny top-frequency needlings which pick away and may not even register at first, depending on our hearing range. Then there are the infinite layers which build and intertwine: these are integral to Carney’s compositions, but take time to unfurl.

And so it is that ‘’End Codes’ is by no means an album with an instant grip, but is instead a slow burner that requires – and invited – repeat listening. And each listen offers up something more. Is ‘End Codes’ as good as ‘Hollow Ponds’? Possibly. Ask me in six months.



  author: Christopher Nosnibor

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Astronauts - End Codes