Review Summary: Hope is real.
Let's talk about music's potential as an anti-depressant for a minute. I don't think that music can solve problems, but I think it can act as a comforter. A comforter can't make your problems better, but it can make you feel better about them, which has the same effect on you.
There's a classic question when it comes to music, or any art for that matter: why do some people consume things that feel sad? As most heavy listeners can attest, there are moments in life when the only thing that feels real is something that makes you want to cry. It can be relieving and cathartic to express your emotions. If successful, there's often a moment after this, when you look around and see all the potential in the world and in yourself. You realize that anything you want to do, you can do.
I want to say that No Way Down traps both of these feelings - comfort and recognition of possibilities, but that wouldn't be accurate. Instead, I think it releases these feelings to the listener, even after the listen. It's an auditory sunrise, a gasp of breath from an ocean of sorrows, a spark of light. I have trouble even explaining how this sounds without using experiences, feelings and ideas that have little to do with music. There's ambient, gorgeous strings. There's a happy, stretching bassline in "No Excuses," the album's centerpiece. There's brilliantly selected crate-digging samples, transforming a high-pitched rave-esque vocal cut into a completely genuine cry of young delight, and cutting an obscure bit from an 80s Beauty and the Beast remake onto "Collapsing Outside Your Doorstep." (As far as sampling goes, this is probably the closest the world will ever get to another Since I Left You 2 - there's even a horse neighing in "Windmill Wedding," just like "Frontier Psychiatrist.") But there's no simple formula I can use to explain what these songs are about on a musical level, no left-brain explanation because everything about it screams imagination and memories, nostalgia and possibility.
"'Sort of like a dream, isn't it?' 'No, better.'" explains the aforementioned "Collapsing Outside Your Doorstep." I don't know exactly what Air France were thinking when they decided to use that, but to me, it's the mission statement of the EP. Passivity is default but the human race doesn't have to be default, our hopes can be our future. Life is more than a dream.
