Review Summary: Look, Sowing, I know you’re gonna review this, I just wanna get some brownie points.
I think I remember listening to
The Albatross quite a long time ago. I remember it being good. Touted as part of the ‘emo-revival’, Foxing did a pretty good job of convincing people that there was still life left in a genre people had long forgotten. Which makes
Nearer My God all the more conflicting. Yeah, okay, those emo elements are still
kinda there, particularly in the lyricism;
"Gainer from the balcony/Swan dive into the concrete" from ‘Gameshark’; but that’s where the association with emo ends. This is some weird Modest Mouse-esque pop. The vocals are erratic but satisfying, the drums are off-beat but not tacky, and the effects are plentiful and build character. It isn’t a neat package, and that’s what makes it so damn exciting. It’s a sound Foxing had barely scratched the surface of on previous outings, and here they go all out. The album can take the form of crazy instrumental/vocal duos in tracks like the aforementioned ‘Gameshark’, or slow down to a climatic crawl on ‘Slapstick’. It can take on the vocal-driven build found on Bon Iver’s most recent LP in the form of nine-minute monster ‘Five Cups’, or the instrumental stop-start of ‘Won’t Drown’.
Nearer My God covers such an incredible amount of musical landscape whilst maintaining focus. It never strays from
being Foxing, but has evolved beyond what anyone expected. It dips and dives through a plethora of sounds, achieving greatness with every song. It’s a combination of sounds rarely seen and even more rarely decent, but
Nearer My God achieves so much due to a standout vocal performance, a blend of post-rock, indie and pop leanings, and an incredibly complex and diverse instrumental performance that consistently conveys and emotions the vocals don’t. It's a crazy ebb and flow entirely unmatched by anything heard this year, and you'd be hard-pressed to find something that grips you as hard as
Nearer My God does.
5/5
Recommended Tracks: Grand Paradise, Slapstick, Game Shark, Five Cups, Won’t Drown, Lambert
