ALBUM REVIEW: There Will Come Soft Rains – VLMV

Amidst the frantic, accelerating pace of the modern world, the need for the spaces of calm reflection that music can bring grows greater every day. Few are better suited to the task than multi-instrumentalist Pete Lambrou. Alongside a successful career composing for adverts and TV, his project VLMV has put out a succession of albums over the past decade, a mix of post-rock and electronica at their most ambient extremes.

It’s unsurprising, then, that VLMV‘s fourth album There Will Come Soft Rains follows the same template: slow tempos, soft swells of strings and synth pads, gentle vocal lines and subtle builds. Opener Tribal (A Heart, Self Taught) opens with mesmerising synth-pad swells, Lambrou‘s soft voice droning over them, as the song transforms into a slice of electronica akin to JON HOPKINS, anchored by a gentle four-to-the-floor drum kick.

There Will Come Soft Rains does a lot with a relatively narrow and sparse palette of instrumentation. Part of that comes from its widescreen feel, no doubt a product of its initial Dolby Atmos mix. Sonically, the electronic components vary more in their execution rather than the sound design, but the clever layering in Bodies Grown (Pt. 1) and the excellent Somnolence In Reverse work well. Other tracks lean more on strings and/or piano in support, with occasional dabs of reverb-laden post-rock guitar on the likes of In Absentia. Throughout, Lambrou‘s vocals are unflashy but never weak, varying from calming lullaby tones to overlayed falsetto refrains.

Often, the challenge of making solid ambient music is to avoid getting lost in the background, slipping from calming introspection into a soporific slumber. A few tracks here push hard on synth leads to jolt the attention, particularly on We Are All Explorers Now and In Absentia. The former repeats the same staccato measure in 5/8 throughout, as strings and vocals operate underneath in a different time signature. The effect is mildly grating after a couple of minutes; some undertones are detectable, but it feels like the stereo mixdown scrubbed some of the intended detail. In Absentia fares a little better, its bold detuned synths at least sliding between chords to create some variation alongside a more prominent vocal line.

Thematically, the album draws its title and its inspiration from a Sarah Teasdale poem written in 1918 in the wake of the First World War and the Spanish flu epidemic. That poem spoke to nature’s indifference to humanity’s potential extinction, a prospect that modern times and the climate crisis cast in a different light. Yet for all the echoes of calm nature and post-apocalyptic reflection that this musical palette invariably evokes, this is an album infused with humanity. Later track Philistine! (Reclaim The Sky!), after a first half of post-rock guitar nudging through some synth pads, switches to piano and vocals, initially of despondency about the future, and then a defiant titular pushback.

For the most part, the tracks across There Will Come Soft Rains feel a little more like vignettes than full-fledged songs. The looping intermezzo feel of We Are All Explorers Now feels structure-less; the sparkling ambience of Bodies Grown (Pt. 1) rises and falls at its own pace, and feels like the sort of thing latter-day 65DAYSOFSTATIC would throw a breakbeat over. Tracks like the aforementioned Philistine! trail off, their crescendo moments over before you realise.

There are a couple of exceptions: The Pilot finds a decent structural build from a sparse looped synth to cathartic strings and looped vocal refrains. Single and album highlight I Am An Officer repeats the build trick, this time with a lovely piano-driven approach and a memorable hook, on an album that struggles to match that kind of melodic staying power. Its pace switch in the final act and Anja Madhvani‘s harmony vocals make this the standout of the record. Though instrumental Somnolence In Reverse deserves a mention on that count too, finally getting the balance of foregrounded synths right along with some deft and exciting percussion.

As with even the best ambient music, disappointment awaits those looking to have their attention forcibly grabbed here. VLMV achieve a lot with a sparse palette, even if the execution is choppy in places and the standout moments are few and far between. Fans of the likes of SIGUR RÓS and HAMMOCK will doubtless find this interesting and worthy. But ultimately, There Will Come Soft Rains yields its best rewards with a good set of headphones, a dark room, and closed eyes to best appreciate its languid pace, subtle builds, and calm.

Rating: 7/10

There Will Be Soft Rains is set for release on April 24th via Pelagic Records. 

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