Review Summary: Step 1: bring bear spray
How To Survive In The Woods, the debut full-length from Vancouver’s Viridian, understands a thing or two about the importance of atmosphere. Every minute detail, from the delicate coalescence of Danielle Davie’s harmonized vocals to the distant hum of transistor radio samples and far-away piano arpeggios, serves to not only construct a cozy listening climate, but also to encourage further immersion into Viridian’s world. Drawing obvious inspiration from self-titled era Bon Iver, as well as the glacial melodic flourishes of
A Moon Shaped Pool,
How To Survive In The Woods is a confident debut project that sometimes overplays its hand, but manages to cement Viridian as an artist to watch in upcoming years.
While Davie’s lead vocals and harmonic arrangements are commendable and often stunning, the ethereal and wintry timbre of the instrumentals is
How To Survive’s truest selling point. Davie and multi-instrumentalist Michael Di Spirito conjure images of triumph on opening cut “Preface”, culminating with a patient and incisive guitar solo that introduces the record’s most counterintuitive strength; rising above all the ambience and atmosphere, Viridian are at their most compelling when they truly let the floodgates open. This is slightly unfortunate, as the majority of the album’s runtime remains within a similar dynamic range and often neglects to opt for this more energetic attitude. That decision occasionally pays dividends, such as on “No One Can Save Us”, which begins as a heart-stopping fingerpicked acoustic track before unfolding into an array of delay-soaked electric melodies. Album highlight “Slowly/Letting Go” is another mellow cut, a stellar two-part number that boasts a guitar tone one could hope to drown in, as well as some of the album’s most impressive vocal arrangements
However, other two-part tracks don’t work as well; early album cut “The Embrace/(Continued)” attempts to wow with microtonal piano riffs and a rare instance of acoustic drums, but builds to very little emotional payoff, even with the disappointing “(Continued)” listed as its own track, ostensibly to function as some sort of jaw-dropping coda. “The Embrace” also introduces a unique problem that Viridian can easily weed out on future projects; an excessive reliance on spoken word samples. “Swim” and closer “A Short Day” also use them as a crutch, with the latter containing an almost two-minute speech by John F. Kennedy, a decision I found unintentionally hilarious once I realized who was speaking.
How To Survive is a notably impressive project, and its shortcomings stem from stylistic choices that can easily be rectified on future releases. Viridian’s songwriting chops are undeniable, their ability to create an atmosphere and hold listener’s attention is commendable, and their first full-length release is absolutely worth your time. Whether it’s the praiseworthy soloing, breezy pads and ambience, or heavenly vocal arrangements, any listener can find something to appreciate about
How To Survive In The Woods.
