Review Summary: In the presence of something.
Riding another artist’s “wave” has always seemed to be the easiest way to gain short term success in the music industry. My Bloody Valentine gave birth to an abundant amount of wave riders in the shoegaze genre with
Loveless. While the originators are remembered long after their time, the “wave riders” are usually long forgotten when it’s all said and done, even if they emulate the originators well enough to surpass them. That is the case with
In the Presence of Nothing, Lilys’ debut. An album released during the so called golden age of shoegaze,
Presence takes advantage of the fuzzy guitars and buried vocals that My Bloody Valentine made genre staples. The eerily-picked guitar lead and tom-rhythm intro of “There’s No Such Thing as Black Orchids” sets the album off on an aphotic tone. It’s like the bad feeling you get the first time you stand at the edge of a diving board as a kid. The height of your fear comes over you as you’re airborne, and a sense of relief fills you as your body goes beneath the water, which is symbolized by the sixteen measures of tense build-up diving into the exceptionally lush guitar chords. At this point, I knew I was in the presence of something.
The album is, tonally, always organically changing, similar to our own lives. From the seemingly endless hours we spend at work and/or school the majority of our days (“Collider”, “It Does Nothing For Me”), to those few and far between happy moments where you feel as alive as ever (“Periscope”, “Claire Hates Me”), but there are always the crushing lows that tip the scale. The Track “Elizabeth Colour Wheel” is similar to how small things accumulate over time. Eventually the weight becomes too heavy to carry and it ultimately breaks you, kind of like that guy jumping on the tree branch in that old Allstate commercial. The way the song slowly crumbles after an explosion of swelling guitars makes for the most intimate moment on the entire album. The climax and centerpiece of the album is the twelve minute epic “The Way Snowflakes Fall”. Getting lost in this track is not a hard thing to do, just like how we get lost in the music we consume every day. Sometimes we don’t want to be found, but “Threw a Day” reminds us that life doesn’t stop, and there’s always the next day (or track).
No matter what the mood is though, the rhythm section is always pushing the album forward. The drums are upfront and very rarely lost under the droning guitars, while the fuzzy bass adds foundation and is actually the driving force of a good amount of the tracks here. Lyrically, there isn’t much to this album. Front man Kurt Heasley plagues this album with lines that lack context. But in spite of some small flaws,
In the Presence of Nothing is a diamond in the rough. Does it do anything super different or innovative? No, but does it really matter? In a genre where the biggest innovators are seen as the ‘be all, end all’, albums like this are overlooked far too often. After
Presence’s successor,
Eccsame the Photon Band, Kevin Heasley took Lilys into a more indie pop direction, but
In the Presense of Nothing will always be Kevin’s crowning achievement.
