The latest release from Overhead, The Albatross delivers an array of exciting, vast, and cinematic tonalities and a form of progressive and post-rock undertones but with an eclectic approach that brings together a set of textures that create such a beautifully intense atmosphere at times that you get engulfed by it all.
The I Leave You This album is a unique and outside-the-box release where no two songs are alike. Each one individually takes you on a different journey but when you listen to the record as a whole, you get a beautiful escape that whisks you away and pulls you from wherever you are and whatever you're doing to put you in these worlds.
This is the kind of record that is a complete passion project and although there was a lot of attention to detail during the creation of this, you can tell that the personalities and characters along with tons of heart always stay true throughout the unfolding of the album.
This may be the most important aspect of the entire thing.
The record is composed of not only this sort of progressive post-rock approach but also involves electronic, gorgeous layered string sections, different vocal approaches, spoken word, and more.
There's no way to explain simply with words, what this album gives you and what it sounds like.
I can tell you that you should not only be listening to a few tracks.
Listening to one or two songs from this album in particular will not even give you a gist of what you can expect let alone the experience and spectrum of what the album has to offer as a whole.
There is so much going on and so many layers to be peeled back.
If you listen to the album from beginning to end, you do indeed get this particular experience. When that experience is over, you have to reacclimate yourself back to reality again.
I would compare this album to a film or a good book. The songs serve almost as chapters of a book. If you sit back and let it all come to you, you get such a wonderful aesthetic.
The album comes through with this vastness and expansive undertone a lot of the time and that's not only due to string sections, but also synth pads that build on that atmosphere a lot of the time.
Those strings are beautiful though. I think the string sections add plenty of the drive and emotional backbone the songs provide.
The energy levels fluctuate as do the intensities that you hear throughout the record's course but you do start to feel a little bit of a staple undertone as you get halfway through the release.
You begin to understand what the record is about and start connecting with it on a deeper level.
Again, the emotional push and drive it delivers can be intense but it feels amazing to close your eyes and get washed away with the soundscape of everything.
This is a release that you listen to in full, and I suggest doing so with headphones on because then you can really soak in all the different textures and layers floating through the ethers of some of these songs.
I promise you will get a different experience than you've had in a long time listening to an album.
You can tell this comes from a band with a real love for their craft. When I say that I don't just mean playing instruments or singing. I mean writing songs together that give you that atmosphere and impact.
These are songs that let you feel and make you think and we need much more of that right now in music.
A brilliant combination of genre-bending approaches let this album swim around in the air that surrounds you.
Have a good listen to this album, do it with headphones, and remember where you heard it first.
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