Project Description

City Calm Down

Echoes In Blue

(Album Review)

By Aaron Christensen

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Melbourne alternative pop/rock four-piece, City Calm Down, are back with their sophomore record, Echoes In Blue. The new album is delivered with the same morosely-tinged, synth-pop soundscape of their debut In A Restless House, yet is more refined, mature, and lyrically and sonically expansive. The spiritual successor to their first release, Echoes In Blue delves into the artificiality and impersonality of modern life and finding the incredibly elusive, perhaps mythologised, work/life balance. Unflinching and unfaltering in its unabashed exploration of the coagulation of anxieties and stresses in a 24-hour world, the poetically rousing crescendos catapult this album firmly into the public psyche, cementing City Calm Down as artists at the cusp of stardom.

The soft, haunting piano intro to the latest single and album opener, Joan, I’m Disappearing, sets the overall tone of the album; a dark, brooding, almost claustrophobic atmosphere. Singer Jack Bourke’s vocals are untamed and intrepid, but restrained: his silken baritone laying bear the fruits of artistic creation in the high-stress environment of modern life. Coupled with irresistible drumming, gentle guitar riffs, and soaring synths, the album opener provides the perfect taste of what is to come. Second track and third single, In This Modern Land absolutely oozes of The Cure, with the guitar intensely reminiscent of the UK alt-rock legends’ song, Pictures of You. The sumptuous interplay of guitar and synthesisers propel this song to a moment of silence—the calm before the storm—as the guitar kicks back in and the drums pound once more, before reaching a horn-soaked climax that will fill your ears and melt your heart.

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A gentle opening, leading to the frenetic guitar of Distraction/Losing Sleep is only fitting; the title perfectly sets the tone for the song—raucous throughout with thrashing drums and lashing guitar licks. The fourth track and second single, Blame, adds a more sombre, reclusive touch to the album, with the driver being Bourke’s melancholic vocals, hitting an evocative falsetto crescendo. Track five, April 18, a date mentioned in the opener, is a 30-second interlude, linking Blame and the following song; Decision Fatigue. Instrumentally bombastic yet vocally discreet, Decision Fatigue, according to the band, is an homage to the Johnny Cash cover of Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt, with the narrator in the City Calm Down track taking on the role of person ‘hurt’ in the Johnny Cash/Nine Inch Nails song.

The seventh track Kingdom, begins soft and sombre, before awakening into the perfect blend of indie rock style guitars overlain with driving synths. Lyrics vocalise the crippling and obscene debts people take on to afford a house, at the cost of their own creative and innovative potential. The lead single from Echoes In Blue is Blood, a song detailing the vampiric qualities of modern employment, the blood-sucking and soul-destroying hours, requirements and commitments that are requisite for surviving in the ultra-competitive landscape of modernity. Continuing with the crushing realities of modern life is I Heard Nothing From You, a seeming follow-on from In This Modern Land, the eighth track details the breakdown of a relationship and missing the signs that it was ending. A soft, slow track, Bourke’s debonair vocals and the backing chorus are the centerpiece, adding extra emphasis to the melancholy capitulation of the narrator’s relationship.

Track ten is an instrumental titled Amber that flows into the intro to the penultimate track, Pride, which details the agonising situation of allowing personal insecurities to influence, derail and destroy ones relationships and connections. The inclusion of a horn section underlie the gravitas afforded to the lyrics by the pulsing synthesisers, culminating in a rousing crescendo before laying Bourke’s vocals bare in the final seconds. The final, title track Echoes In Blue, begins with off-kilter sounds and a melodic piano before the sombre vocals kick in. The song undergoes a series of time signature shifts as the song ebbs and flows, between an instrumental vacuum and vast sonic soundscapes, with some truly incredible drumming throughout. Detailing a couple whose communication has broken down, the relationship is rife with mistrust and mistaken intent, before reaching a crescendo and culminating in the gradual dispersion of instruments and Bourke’s echoed vocals.

Echoes In Blue is truly a gift of an album. Coming from a band struggling to balance work, relationships and music, the album offers deep insight not only into the band themselves, but modern society as a whole, representing the culmination of raw, inspiring and intensely evocative artistic expression.

Order the new album, Echoes In Blue here

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