Underlined Passages – Landfill Indie
Underlined Passages – Landfill Indie – Album Review
Nope. Nope. Nope. Brace yourselves…I’m about to have a vowel movement.
Y’all know I literally bust out into hives anytime Microsoft Word highlights more than two spelling errors in a document, right? Somehow I’m supposed to sit here & type out these song titles from Landfill Indie and feel good about it as a writer? Honestly I should respond by writing this entire review out only in emojis.
And I might have…if I wasn’t a writer and I didn’t believe in actual WORDS. What are we doing here?
It’s a good thing I like these guys or I’m not sure I’d be able to pivot and actually write about the music on this new album by Underlined Passages instead of focusing on the visually horrific titles of these tunes! I just gotta remember to “brythe,” right? This is going to be the longest review I’ve ever written.
Okay. Focus. There’s plenty of good here. LISTEN to the energy that Underlined Passages comes busting outta the gate with on this record will ya? Freakin’ fantastic if you ask me…the guitars and drums on “brythe” immediately grip your attention, and before you know it, you’re right in the thick of what’s essentially the perfect track to open an album or a live show with. Greatness is sure to be found here…if anything, that’s what the main takeaway becomes…if Underlined Passages sounds THIS damn good right off the bat, then surely they’re about to keep crushing the rest of this set, yes? “brythe” has got the JUICE y’all…we’re talkin’ single-worthy sound right off the bat. It’s a stellar combination of highly present musicianship alongside dreamy, atmospheric vocals…I am without question, extremely impressed. This is coming from a guy that has been a genuine fan from the moment I’ve heard this band’s music, and still continues to be now, even despite how they’ve chosen to spell their latest songs. For real though – I’ve known Underlined Passages to possess the capacity for excellence based on what I’ve heard in the past already, but with “brythe” you get the feeling that this next step is a giant leap.
A track like “brkn” reminds me a lot of the Comfort In Sound-era writing in Feeder, which has always been one of my favorite bands, so at least with me, Underlined Passages is keeping great company. I mean, look…I think the most you’re going to find me conceding to you in regards to this song is that it pretty much remains in the gear that it starts in straight on through to the finish. Is that problematic? Not really in the context of a song that’s less than three minutes in length, and especially not when the particular gear in question is as welcome to the ears as this is. I’ll put it to you this way – I could cite a hundred songs that implore a similar method that fall flat because there’s not enough variation to them – but it’s rare tracks like “brkn” that seem to manage to beat the odds and leave us wanting nothing more. And before you all get uppity and start to argue that there IS a bit of a chorus to be found on this song, lemme just stop you there and say no…I mean…there IS, yes, but no, it’s not the kind of shift into another part that makes the difference. It’s a logical progression into more of what you were already digging on and a display of consistency…and it’s proof that sometimes, that’s all we need. “brkn” is a highly emotional piece of music when it comes right down to it…almost paralyzed by events that have taken place, and what cracks of light it offers in the dark seem to illuminate a perspective that’s trying to convince itself that things are actually gonna be okay. Honestly, I really kind of love that it sounds more hopeful and optimistic than it has us believing…to me, “brkn” was seriously devastating, and no matter how much Underlined Passages try to convince us otherwise, the static nature of the gear that it’s stuck in & the anti-chorus suggests that this is a track that’s really all about spinning your wheels emotionally.
When I heard “mnglx” – a title that I still can’t figure out no matter how I rearrange these letters on my Scrabble board – all I could think about was how much I’d wanna see Underlined Passages and Slow Coda play a show together…maybe bring The Quality Of Mercury out of retirement as a third…I’d be all set and front row and I could probably die happy from there. The definition in this cut is seriously awesome to listen to. Atmospherically-inclined Alt-Indie…like, what’s not to love? The whole band is killin’ it on this one – from the grip of the guitars from band-leader Michael Nestor, to the power displayed by the rhythm section in Roger Stewart (Drums) & Gary Hewitt (Bass) – you gotta hand it to Underlined Passages for how well they play together as a unified force. That first descent you take with the progression around the forty-second mark is a masterstroke of genius if you ask me…it’s almost like they take you in the opposite direction you’d expect in a pre-chorus moment while building up the momentum to get to the main hooks, and it’s bloody remarkable how precisely they pull that off. The chorus itself is fantastic and definitely lives up to the expectations they set up for you in the journey to get there, and you get a verifiable highlight from Stewart’s throne as he hits every part of his kit to keep you fully entertained. Is the pre-chorus more of a memorable hook than the actual chorus itself is? I’m willing to listen to ya if that’s how you feel…I had many spins through “mnglx” where I definitely felt the same way. In any event, it’s never a bad thing to create multi-dimensional tunes with hooks in every place you tilt your head to listen…in fact, you might consider that to be one of the best problems you could have in music.
I am no stranger to Underlined Passages getting things right. That being said, if you had told me years and years ago that some band that once wrote an album called Tandi My Dicafi would be one that I’d always look forward to hearing, I’m sure I’d slide back into the hedge like Homer Simpson and remove myself from the conversation. But here we are, and that’s the case – I am a huge fan of this band, and I’m happy to hear that even without their original lineup, Underlined Passages continues to excel. For those of you out there that don’t know the history of UP at this site of ours, they were one of our top ten bands from 2022 when they released their last album called Neon Inoculation…so to say that the expectations were high for this record would be somewhat of an understatement. I try to never expect too much from anyone out there, because there’s a natural ebb & flow to any career – but it’s clear that Michael is fully locked in and knows the sound he’s looking to create with his songs, inside and out. As I listened to “sldr” I couldn’t help but respect the consistency in the sound, but also the growth in the execution too – this record is like listening to Underlined Passages realize its full potential at long last. It is never easy to adjust to a major change in the lineup/DNA of a band, but there are times where you end up in a situation like this where what might seem like a setback can somehow push you forward. I’ll always love the past records from Underlined Passages – they’re filled with bulletproof material, right up to & including this US-based band’s cover of our Canadian legend Sarah McLachlan’s “Ice Cream” – but at the same time, I can also acknowledge that everything on Landfill Indie does sound like UP evolved.
While sound-wise it might become more the exception than the rule on this record, there’s still a very good chance that “erydy” will be looked at as one of the easiest tracks on this album to enjoy. It’s built with pretty universal sound when it comes right down to it, and while it’s a tinier tune at only 2:26 in length, the accessibility should lead this track to victory. “erydy” has this real organic vibe to it; a natural flow that feels right and instantly makes sense to our ears as we listen. I’m not here to proclaim this is THE track of all tracks on this album…I don’t think that’s how I feel about it – but, I do think it’s one of the cuts that’ll be met with the least resistance by the masses listening, if there’s even any at all. It’s delicate, catchy, and has a shimmering sparkle to the emotional content it displays. In that special way that Underlined Passages does so very, very well, they serve you up heartbreak with a dose of sugar – the closer you listen to the words, the more you’ll hear the confusion and pain at the core of it all, but if you were to just pass by a window with this song playing, you’d swear it was all nothing but pleasant. You always have the option of how much you wanna dig into a song, and it’s tracks like “erydy” that pay off the most when you do, revealing truly substantial content to go along with a sound you’ll easily love.
Steady as she goes…the bass lines from Gary lead the way into “mtavrs,” which in its defense, at least contains a vowel. I’d put it to ya like this…”mtavrs” is a little on the one dimensional side of things, but even IF this was as spare as it gets for variation or dynamics etc., then I think we’re all still in great shape to enjoy this album overall. I think how artists/bands can use their time on a track can be a little misunderstood – we’re all trained for the whole verse/chorus/verse thing, but there are no actual rules written down anywhere. So when you run into songs like “brkn” or “mtavrs” that are more like songs that are moments in time, it can actually be a little strange to experience them because our ears are trained to expect that one thing leads to another – and when that doesn’t happen, to be honest, the folks out there can tend to feel a little cheated in the same way they watch a movie and expect the finale & ending to contain its biggest moments. You see what I was saying about expectations earlier now? They can taint your experience if you’re not too careful with’em. I prefer to “slow down” and allow the music to come to me…let it work its own unique magic, and see how that feels. Doesn’t mean my ears are trained any different than yours are – we all hear music in that same exact way expecting a verse/chorus/verse whether we like it or not – but I have learned to appreciate tunes just as much when they don’t tend to travel as far…sometimes even more. I look at it this way – if Underlined Passages were a freakin’ Prog-Rock band, and they had seventeen minute-long songs, and the entire length of “mtavrs” was inside of that, no one would even bat an eye, because it would just be one part of many. So who’s to say a three minute tune of any kind can’t stand on its own then, right? Sometimes there are also different aspects you can appreciate too, like the slickness of the production on a track like “mtavrs” – it might not be the number one thing people reach for when they’re going to listen to something, but it’s another element you can dig on and notice where the work has been put in here.
That being said, when you’re lumping a bunch of those kind of tracks together, you’re essentially saying to the audience that the album itself pretty much has to be listened to from start to finish. Like it’d be tougher to take out an individual track or two for your playlist, because the material is more effective when it’s combined – make sense? Obviously, in today’s world, there’s some risk associated with that – and it’s something that I’d advise Underlined Passages to be a little bit conscious of. It’s gonna be tougher for the average everyday listener to stick with’em when tracks like “mtavrs” & “hgh wycombe“ are featured back-to-back and arguably don’t do as much as some of the others on the inside of each song…that’s gonna be a pinch point on the record for some that are casually listening or hearing UP for the first time. For the dedicated fans like ME and others, you’ll probably enjoy the hypnotic & mesmerizing qualities of a track like “hgh wycombe,“ even if we can acknowledge there is still room for the band to have done more with it, potentially. That ‘more’ we’re often looking for comes in the form of other tracks – that’s what I’m getting at when I’m talking about how the real context that these tunes thrive in is in the full length of the album. When dissecting them individually, it can appear a little thin, but on the broader spectrum, Underlined Passages has a really solid grip on how to create a full album.
Sometimes you can really hear when things are about to go right for the band though, and that’s been a prevalent staple of their past records as well. You’ll know when you’ve reached the kind of song that they create that’s gonna connect with you, because it’s something you can feel from the very first moments. Like, I knew that “sndnia” would end up being one of my favorites from Landfill Indie right away…that’s the effect of having experience with this band’s music I suppose. It could also be the effect of having a bit more time & space to work their magic too though…Underlined Passages tend to keep their tunes pretty short, but they allow “sndnia” a bit more room to “brythe” at nearly four & a half minutes. Michael really knows how to find these spectacularly hypnotic gears for his guitars and vocals, and perhaps even more to the point, he knows how to pair each element in a very precise way that allows us to happily get lost in the confines of the UP sound. I know we’re all different, and we all tend to gravitate towards what we like or what we love…but hopefully there’s a whole bunch of you out there that will be every bit as stoked about this record as I am. Underlined Passages hasn’t let me down one iota despite anything I might have pointed out along the way in this review…I’m really drifting back & forth between the way I hear things and the way others might when I write this stuff, but for my money, Landfill Indie is certainly worth the price of admission and well worth the time spent listening. And hell yeah – my gut instincts were totally right about “sndnia” – it IS one of the album’s best songs in my not-so-humble opinion, and it should be the kind of track that encourages them to keep expanding their ideas in the future. It’s tougher to lengthen songs when you’re looking to write in the moment and stick to that singular gear…but that can often be the cue to get back under the hood and keep tinkering.
So again, to the point of context & such…Landfill Indie is really only asking for less than a half hour of your precious time, and from my perspective after having had a healthy listen over these past couple weeks or so, I feel like they’ve got a full album here. Individually, the songs are probably more likely to appeal to dedicated fans of the band, or fans of the Indie/Shoegaze type of genres…but the real magic of Landfill Indie is absorbing the entire album. That’s where you’ll find that rise/fall and the ebb & flow you typically associate within an individual song, you know what I mean? Think of it like this – Landfill Indie IS a song…it just happens to be twenty eight minutes & twenty two seconds long – does that make more sense to you now? Perspective is everything…I’m just doing the best I can to prepare ya for what you’re in-store for. The album wraps up with another solid tune – “lkbkwds,” which produces another sensational highlight for Roger’s drums, and gives the record the real conclusive & strong ending this effort deserved. All-in-all, I’m really damn happy about this album, even despite all of its heavy & heartbreaking themes…there’s great stuff in the mix here, and potent content that hits you right in the gut in all the right ways. This final track reminds me a lot of where I felt like Acharya was heading before they unfortunately split up…but if I could extend that original wishlist of a concert with one more name, I think I just found the one I’d pick after listening to “lkbkwds.” That’d be one spectacular lineup of four, and incidentally, every single one of them has ended up on our yearly top ten throughout the years…just sayin.’
A guy can dream I suppose…and a record with a sound like Landfill Indie has can certainly induce them.
Find out more about Underlined Passages at their official website at: http://www.underlineslove.com
HEY YOU! YES YOU! You – the person reading this RIGHT NOW! Instead of emailing us to find out how you could be the next up on our pages at sleepingbagstudios and waiting days for our response – just click here will ya!?!
