Written by: Alex Green
A song cycle of sepia soundscapes, Lunar Twin’s Night Tides EP is a series of sonic snapshots that perfectly capture the sadness of summer, the murky beauty of memory and the complicated architecture of desire.
This six-song offering from the L.A./Hawaii duo of Chris Murphy and Bryce Boudreau further demonstrates what Lunar Twin have been proving on each of their successive releases–this is a band that not only continues to deepen artistically, they challenge themselves to pilot wilder waters each time.
And on Night Tides they emerge unscathed.
Like a surfer staring down a soaring swell, Lunar Twin are unafraid to step into the groove and explore where it might take them. And this time around the voyage is a metaphorical locale that’s as tropical as it is stormy. Longitudinally, the coordinates are somewhere between the heart and what sets it on joyful fire and in between all that is a turbulent middle, a metaphysical wrestling with the waves that accounts for the ebb and flow of emotional satisfaction.
The songs here are full-bodied blasts of dreamy pop that are as exquisite as they are menacing. The melancholic tropicalia of “Waves” glides smoothly away; “Blood Moon” purrs with a spacey, quiet darkness and the late night elegy “Coral Sea” descends darkly like a drowning in real time. Sounding like a nautical Mark Lanegan by way of “Rime Of The Ancient Mariner,” the white foam flows on Night Tides and the furrow follows free, indeed.
That said, this is as much a journey as it is a descent–a grappling with fathoms and phantoms, a reckoning with what not only keeps us up, but what holds us down.
And maybe the jaunty electronica of “Birds Of Paradise” offers a respite from the waves, but the churning “Prayers Of Smoke” sounds like someone being pulled under the surface for good, while the stark title track closes the proceedings with plangent grace.
A rather perfect offering, no matter what lurks below.
