The very fabric of one's being, of the human experience itself is sonically perfected in this noisy, haunting magnum opus
Leaves Turn Inside You. Like peaking into the brain of a virus gone insane,
Leaves... shows you a world of upside-town trees, intense swirls of air, ever-changing colors, and electircal circuits going off at the speed of infinity. Now, this might seem utterly pretentious, but I find it is nearly impossible to listen to this album and come out the other side without any thoughts of what you just heard as being completely and entirely mind-boggling. While it may take the listener many times to fully digest what is actually occurring (opening track "We Invent You" starts off with 2 minutes of nothing but constant, droning feedback, for example), the album eventually shows itself to have substance and tracks that are not only listenable, but downright catchy like the bubbling dissonance of "Look A Ghost".
But that's where the accessible train stops, as "Look A Ghost" comes off as the only instantly gratifying track in the bunch. Instead the rest of the tracks on
Leaves Turn Inside You spend their time infiltrating you, as if the album opens you up, page by page until your finally broken at the end. Whether it's the swaying, zooming "December", or the epic freak show of "Terminus", Unwound use their noisy and loud tornadoes of meloncholy to deteriorate the listener. It's an awfully exhausting album (clocking in around 80 minutes) and it doesn't sway too far from its abrasive nature, but that's part of the appeal to it; it's so thick that once you break through you're left with an astounding sense of relief and astonishment. The beautiful "October All Over", with its truly haunting guitar lead deceives the listener into thinking the album is going to take a break from the madness and instead shoves all conviction to the side and dives even deeper into the pool. Waves of sinister noise are backed up by a beautiful violin line until everything but stop-and-go cymbals and prodding ambience close out the track. It's one of the best songs on the album and marks a highlight of indie rock in general.
I've heard some bleak and drilling albums in my day, but this just takes the cake. Like being cut by razor sharp leaves as they swirl around the vulnerability of your flesh and combining raw, dense noise and the most meloncholic, penetrating vocals and lyrics, Unwound's
Leaves Turn Inside You is just simply unreal. Listen to it then listen to it again, and again after that. If you're lucky, one of those times you will break free of the catastrophic clutch Unwound bestow upon you and find yourself mesmerized by one of the most seminal albums I've ever heard. 5/5
