2023-08-05 12:25:24
Indie pop in the endlessly gentle guise of soft folk and indietronica elegy: his fifth studio album Cloud Souvenirs Chris Staples came up with on a trip to Florida to his ailing mother.
Away from everyday touring in the band von Father John Misty Staples indulges in personal, melancholic reflections on solo paths, which, no matter how heavy their hearts may sometimes be, are light as a feather and airy, absolutely pleasant and tender – yes, they even create a non-binding triviality that, with a fleetingness that is never completely tangible, is a hair’s breadth from the Changing boundaries, all too easy to fall into oblivion.
Absolutely paradoxical and maybe because of that absolutely adequate for an album that conceptually more or less revolves around memories: “Memories are souvenirs we carry around with us. They remind us of where we came from, and who we are.“ says Staples, and on this basis he has written songs that often also raise hopes from these retrospectives in order to look optimistically to the future.
Staples does this from Nasty Habit away in the reduced sound with warm acoustic guitars, a gentle indietronica rhythm and subtle synth embellishments in front of carefully breathed vocals – aesthetically just as if Fences tinkered around a campfire with a composition by Gary Lightbody.
Elsewhere, the unexcited, hardly exciting, but absolutely beautiful numbers in intimate fragility sound like virtues connected by sleepy dozing soft focus Iron & Wine, Travis and Cigarettes After Sex (especially in the ambience, later thoughtfully appeared Looking Into Me), Meanwhile I Want to Get Lost the eclecticism gen Postal Service adopted.
Burnout Together stacks in strumming slow-mo, as if Rivers Cuomo was dreaming up pop not for stadiums but for solitude (before Do Whatever I Want as a catchy catchy tune and dances naively playfully out into the world) while Staples wonders “How can I be humble/ If I‘m Gonna Live Forever?“ – just to get in Dreams Come True to give the answer indirectly to vague wind instruments: “All my dreams come true/ But I only got a few.“
Nothing stays forever. Not the ones you love, and not even the memory of them. That is the essence of Cloud Souvenirs.
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