Review Summary: My new favorite, hands down.
This is my new favorite album of all time. I love the depth and complexity, and while enough elements remain similar throughout each song to maintain their internal cohesiveness, there are also strong - sometimes surprising - variations. This leads to a listening experience that is both soothing and engaging.
Each song begins with a short, mood-setting introduction which is overtaken a note at a time by the guitar, which then takes that mood and plays with it a million different ways. In Rainwater, especially, the intro gets the listener's mind in the right space to fully understand the track. The intro sounds like a short clip of rain on repeat. It sounds soggy; wet. But in those few seconds the repetition reminds the listener of wet boots slogging through mud, or of rain so heavy it comes in sheets. Because it seems to be a clip on repeat, here's an electronic edge to it, and the contrast between that and the previous track is almost unsettling. Then comes the guitar, starting slow and rhythmic. It pushes that unsettling feeling away. There's only the guitar, repeating a soothing pattern that, since we're now in the right mindset, sounds very much like gentle rain. Soon, another layer is added, and the song intensifies. It takes on more depth, but is still peaceful and calming. And then - it's like the rain picks up. Quick taps on the guitar, quick touches on the strings, fast notes with an almost frenzied undertone. The unsettled feeling is back, and as it returns it is enunciated beautifully by long, haunting cries from the guitar. Ultimately, though, those long notes slow the pace, and the entire song very naturally flows back into its original, peaceful rhythm. Because the intro has already made us think of rain in its many incarnations, these variations feel incredibly natural, and they continue throughout the song while still keeping the satisfying feeling of coherency and of having a definable beginning, middle, and end.
On the other hand, Jenny is the only song on the album that does not have an intro played on something other than guitar, and it is, in my opinion, the most beautiful one of all. It manages to invoke a slew of emotions with the guitar alone, then trails off into almost nothing before coming back with the album's only vocal portion: a deep and reverberating male voice that speaks gently to the listener. The music swells and drops and is punctuated by this incredible voice that is both strong and vulnerable, until the song comes to its climax and its end, which feels almost wistful. And since Jenny is the final track, thus ends the entire album. It leaves the listener with that sort of wistful feeling; a longing that could be for a missing lover but, in the case of Sleep Paralysis in Spheres, is maybe simply for more acoustic guitar by Lonney(s).
