Review Summary: Expansive moments of tranquility
Bell Plaines treads a fine line on
Through Fog. One doesn’t need to look any further than the title to know what to expect, yet the cover art and song titles such as ‘Summer Night’ and ‘When The Rain Comes Back’ make sure that you can’t miss the fact you’ve encountered a post rock album and, yes, it’s supposed to sound gorgeous. However, skepticism regarding this potential overkill won’t linger for much longer than the opening seconds of the record, where the breathtaking ambience of the title track’s synths are simply too overwhelmingly peaceful.
In a similar fashion to
Through Fog’s hyper-self awareness of its genre and beautiful nature, it is hard to write about the music without repeating “peaceful”, “beautiful”, and similar adjectives to death - yet, this somewhat paradoxically perfectly captures the record’s strengths. It’s hard to write about, not just because
it is a peaceful and beautiful work of art, but also because there is very little need to put the feelings evoked into words: ‘Summer Night’s drowned out vocals, ‘Everything’s lush guitar melodies, or the rewarding build up and pay off present in ‘Waves’; every song is an expansive moment of tranquility, perfectly capable of speaking for itself.
Through Fog is an album tailor-made for the most beautifully pretentious cliches: it begs one to reminisce about late nights, stargazing, camping at a lake… and that’s more than okay. Allow yourself to be immersed in the album for its hour-long duration, from those gorgeous opening moments until ‘Fade’ quietly explodes into a final post-rock crescendo. Allow Bell Plaines to overwhelm you in the most subtly beautiful fashion: take a breath, and be aware that it will be taken away from you.
