Review & Full Album Premiere: Somali Yacht Club, The Space
[Click play above to stream Somali Yacht Club’s The Space in full. Album is out Friday on Season of Mist. Pre-save digital here, preorder physical here.]
The Space is the third full-length from Lviv, Ukraine’s Somali Yacht Club, as well as their first offering through Season of Mist. It arrives following 2018’s The Sea (review here) and 2014’s The Sun (discussed here) and is accordingly encompassing to suit its title. More over, it is the trio’s first long-player to arrive following their 10th anniversary in 2020, and it lands even as their home country and hometown are under attack by Russian forces in an atrocity-laced war of aggression. The band — guitarist, vocalist, keyboardist Ihor, bassist Artur and drummer Oleksa — are elsewhere and safe, but it is difficult to separate the six-song/45-minute procession from the context in which it arrives, though of course it was completed before the fighting began (unless you count the years of conflict in Crimea, in which case it goes back to the first record and before). Although, if anything were going to aid in that forgetting, it might be actually listening to the album in its entirety. As each Somali Yacht Club release has stepped forward from the last, from the warmer heavy psych of The Sun to the melancholic roll of The Sea, so too does The Space clearly state its evolution from where the band were those eventful four years ago.
Alternating between shorter and longer pieces across opener “Silver” (5:17) and the subsequent “Pulsar” (9:06), “Obscurum” (5:06) and “Echo of Direction” (9:46), and “Gold” (3:33) and closer “Momentum” (12:30), The Space is able to create a sense of movement despite a resoundingly methodical delivery, aspects of heavy post-rock in and around “Obscurum” meeting with the most complex melodies Somali Yacht Club have yet harnessed throughout, even “Gold” — which I feared would be an interlude ahead of the finale — boasting an attention to its arrangement and depth that speaks to the care the band put into their craft on the whole. The Sea was also six songs set in pairs, but the manner in which it happens here is more dynamic, and once “Silver” draws the audience into the universe Somali Yacht Club are constructing, that forward push — gentle at times, slow at times, more of a shove others — does not abate.
In this way, The Space is a monument to the richness in Somali Yacht Club‘s sound as it is today and to the artistic growth that’s led them to this point. It nods confidently at Neurosis, building off the rhythm of that band’s 2001 track “Falling Unknown” in the midsection break of “Momentum” and having its own “Stones From the Sky”-moment in “Echo of Direction,” but takes this influence and scores of others and incorporates it into an expressive sonic palette that is nothing if not Somali Yacht Club‘s own. Psychedelic and otherworldly in its purpose — it’s not called The Space because it’s so grounded — the album’s underlying structures are nonetheless firm, the fluidity that emerges in “Obscurum” as it moves into its post-midpoint wash of melody kept together not even just by the drums, but the unity of intent on the part of the whole band and the sense that, yes, they have a plan they’re playing out and that the thing to do is let them guide you through it.
“Silver” touches on pop melodicism in its crescendo, and conveys the breadth with which the rest of what follows will unfold, “Pulsar” beginning with a duly pulsing progression of bass, guitar and effects swirl over the steady drums, cascading between the serene verses and its harmonized chorus, growing peaceful and declarative in kind as it pushes through a build toward its last apex, the keyboard overtop adding to both melody and drama and assuring that the song holds its resonance even as it hits its final crashes into the sunnier beginning of “Obscurum.” This flow continues all throughout The Space — which would seem to have its vinyl side break between “Obscurum” and “Echo of Direction,” though it’s clearly built with more than one format in mind — and the trio are duly graceful as “Obscurum” surprises with a bit of solo scorch later on, feeling perhaps all the more prominent in the mix for the softer notes just before.
The drums begin “Echo of Direction” and set in motion a hypnotic heavy psych-style jam until the aforementioned Neuro-chug is established, carrying into a quieter verse, gorgeous in its layering and open feel. They tease a volume trade first and then bring back the rumble at about five minutes in before working their way back into ‘the riff,’ then execute the quicker back and forth they had hinted toward earlier, once again showcasing a structural awareness that speaks to their having a big-picture view even as they offer their audience the most breadth they’ve ever had. “Echo of Direction” is encompassing in a way that feels purposeful at the outset of the second half of the tracklist — start of side B by any other name — and that correspondingly means “Gold” is exceptionally well placed between it and the closer, the shorter and more straight-ahead motion of the penultimate cut striking just the same for its floating flourish of guitar and mellow vocals, weighted but flying like some kind of metallic airship.
“Gold” slows down as it wraps, letting the sample and more immediate start of “Momentum” convey urgency without feeling overblown. Those expecting a massive payoff in the ending of The Space will likely be satisfied by the peak in “Momentum” that lands just before the song wraps up, but like the album as a whole, it’s more about the journey to get there and the discoveries made along the way; the long, beautiful and exploratory stretch in the midsection just as engrossing as the inevitably made turn toward more outwardly heavy crunch, a last demonstration of the mastery Somali Yacht Club have over their sound as they approach veteran status from their beginnings as upstarts in what at the time was (and I suppose still is) a crowded European psychedelic underground.
In light of the conflict currently embroiling Ukraine, it is easy to read The Space as bittersweet, and Somali Yacht Club‘s craft has always had its share of melancholy. I’ll offer instead not necessarily an alternate read but perhaps one that accounts more for the awe the trio seem to express in what they’re witnessing in the songs themselves. It is as though they’re on the same journey as the listener, moving outward into the unknown, sure of the getting there even as the destination remains intentionally vague. Most of all, The Space is resonant. In shimmering guitar and rich low end, in its lush swells and directed minimalism, it is a triumph beyond expectation and a reminder that the light and warmth, the star-stuff that makes life possible, is in constant wavelength motion.
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Somali Yacht Club, “Silver” official video
Somali Yacht Club on Instagram
Tags: Lviv, Season of Mist, Somali Yacht Club, Somali Yacht Club The Space, The Space, Ukraine
