ALBUM REVIEW: Songs Of Abundance, Psalms Of Grief – healthyliving
In a world that’s growing ever more divided, sometimes we all need reminding that as people we have far more in common in our daily lives than that which separates us. HEALTHYLIVING, a transnational (though predominantly Scotland-located) collective aim to stress that element of human connection through banality and everyday existence with their debut album Songs Of Abundance, Psalms Of Grief by tapping into shared experience and emotion. Through a haze of noise rock, shoegaze and elements of post-rock, the trio conjure something that sounds ethereal in parts but is fundamentally grounded in humanity and the human experience.
Until opens the album with swirling guitar and dreamy vocals but there’s an unsettling undercurrent, a fleeting sense of disconnect or disharmony. Dream Hive continues in a similar vein as its drums charge forwards but more laconic vocal patterns offer their own counterpoint. That earlier sense of unease is borne out around the halfway mark as it becomes discordant and crescendos before it collapses once more into the background. The band have described their work as “digesting our humanity”, and that sentiment is certainly borne out in the various shades and moods across its runtime.
Inspired by the banal, everyday emotions we all feel and created as a way of interpreting those shared moods, the record is a kaleidoscope of tone and texture that takes both the beauty of life and its horrors; take Galleries’ haunting vocal lines and stripped-back instrumentals that build to a minimalist but no less impactful peak driven by weighty distorted chords and pleading melodies. Or, see the soft Bloom with its indie inspired guitar and unhurried drumming, creating an enveloping calm that bleeds into Back To Back and its minimalist melancholia.
HEALTHYLIVING present an album that’s entrancing in its musicality, while reminding us all the while of how natural human connection is and how many experiences are in fact shared; they don’t all have to be positive, with even the album name acknowledging it tackles both sides of the coin. It’s a striking accomplishment, one that feels tailor-made for the forward-thinking stages of Roadburn (where, unsurprisingly, they’ll be performing this year) and the ears of those who want their music to inhabit that ground between emotional and instrumental weight.
Rather than being heavy for the sake of heavy, HEALTHYLIVING strike a balance, from the clamour of Dream Hive or To the Gallows, which brings in frantic post-metal that bears a hint of CULT OF LUNA’s Mariner, to the raw tones of Galleries or Bloom that eschew complexity to instead go straight for the heart through exposed-nerve songwriting. It’s particularly difficult to pigeonhole Songs Of Abundance, Psalms Of Grief and that’s for the best. Instead of fitting neatly into one box, they choose to present their kaleidoscopic vision of human experience, an ensnaring sonic vision that’s as stunning as it is unsettling.
Rating: 8/10
Songs Of Abundance, Psalms Of Grief is set for release on April 7th via self-release/La Rubia Producciones.
Like HEALTHYLIVING on Facebook.