(2022) Living Hour - Someday Is Today

Review: On their second full-length album, Winnipeg’s Living Hour craft a fitting soundtrack for the intense, isolating winters for which their hometown is known. Luxuriating in languid textures—and balancing stormy swells with long stretches of gossamer softness — Someday Is Today is ideal for gentle swaying and sunbeam dozing. Less playful and more meditative than the band’s breakout 2019 LP Softer Faces, Someday is Today reflects its pandemic-era creation process, which saw the band members sharing phone recordings back and forth and figuring out arrangements through Zoom calls. Finally recorded over seven straight days during the depths of Manitoba winter, these songs carry the wistful weight of months apart. While this album does address all the hardships and longings that loneliness and isolation foster, it doesn’t rush to confront these topics. Instead, these songs take their time. Someday Is Today pairs fragmented, stream-of-consciousness lyrics with soundscapes that flow and grow at their own pace, balancing the post-rock proclivities of Do Make Say Think with the lazy drum machines and synthesizers of Beach House (especially on the opening track, “Hold Me In Your Mind”). “Middle Name” and “December Forever” bring in more conventional indie-rock textures, harkening back to the latter-day work of Winnipeg legends the Weakerthans — which makes all the more sense when you learn that Weakerthans drummer Jason Tait contributed to the record. The impressive trio of producers behind this album helps inform the range of genres that infuse it, including Melina Duterte (AKA Jay Som, who appears on one of the songs), Jonathan Schenke (Parquet Courts, Snail Mail), and Samur Khouja (Cate le Bon, Deerhunter). While these different sonic sensibilities could be disorienting, they’re appropriate for an album that reflects on moments of transition and uncertainty, as the lyrics on “Lemons and Gin” attest: “Watch me change my mind / with the heater on high / while I wait for my ride. Nostalgia and longing mingle on all 11 songs, including “Miss Miss Miss,” a laid-back tribute to Winnipeg’s Palomino Club, expressing the desire to re-enter such a space after so much time in isolation, even despite the steep stairs, bathroom lines, and packed, angular bodies. While the free-form lyrics often heighten the specific peculiarities of Someday Is Today‘s world, the band might capture these emotions best on “Memory Express,” a soothing instrumental that closes the record on a winding, organic sigh. While Someday Is Today meditates on frustrations with modern technology, the oppression of harsh Winnipeg winter, and the loneliness of pandemic self-isolation, it ultimately extends an understated invitation to the listener to feel and experience beyond these communal obstacles. As songwriter Sam Sarty articulates on the penultimate song, “No Body”: “Feel here, Dominique, there’s sky out there.” — exclaim.ca

Track List: 01 - Hold Me in Your Mind 02 - Lemons and Gin 03 - Middle Name 04 - Feelings Meeting 05 - December Forever 06 - Curve 07 - Hump 08 - Miss Miss Miss 09 - Exploding Rain 10 - No Body 11 - Memory Express

Media Report: Genre: dream-pop, shoegaze Country: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada Format: FLAC Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec Bit rate mode: Variable Channel(s): 2 channels Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz Bit depth: 16 bits Compression mode: Lossless Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)

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