It sounds like the wind or a wave, a lonely breath from the lips of a non-existent god, exhaled over a lost and distant land coming to crash upon a beautiful forgotten shore. It aches. It bleeds. As the time passes, the breeze turns into a fluttering whisper, gently beckoning to follow.
Where? Even the wind itself is not sure the exact path that lays before it, but it knows where it wants to be. Somewhere close but impossibly far away. Awash in its own echoes, it resounds in a warming glow; an embrace that holds itself in a comfortable calm yet showing bare the indomitable fury within. This is Sunbather. This is Deafheaven. It is a perfect microcosm all of our personal experiences, elegantly pieced in a tightly wound, hour long ball of time that seems to pass effortlessly in an all too short instant. Sunbather is the despair in wanting – in needing something more. Something to complete you. To complete me. To complete us – as people, as human beings. Its dark core of nihilistic rage is masked in the haze and warmth of our own exteriors, our own masks, yearning to not only feel the sunlight on our untouched skin, but to let it sink in and warm the heart which we fear the most. It is beautiful anguish. It cascades and falls in the immediate pulse of the drum work that is always lurking, always pacing to break through the humid expanse of the constant sea of distorted guitars. Its mournful vocals the soul we all share – alive in our own personal pains – transcending and plummeting on our own accord, just wanting to be saved from ourselves. Sunbather breathes. Sunbather lives. I can feel its heart beating as the seconds pass into minutes. It resonates in time with my own. That is what truly makes it eclipse just being notes on a page or sound on a disc. Whatever the intents of its creators, Sunbather is a malleable work that takes on new meaning with each set of ears it passes through – recalling the most fragile of chords to play once again across the heartstrings -- forever becoming a piece of all of us. That is, if we let it.
