Review Summary: Never release an obvious winter album near the summertime. It'll melt.
Well, the dust settled. Following a vast improvement and their best work since
Hymn To The Immortal Wind, it seems
Snowdrop sees the band falling back into inconsistency. It's a wildly strange decision to release an album like this close to the summertime. It comes off like a fundamental mistake to release an obvious winter album at this time of year.
Snowdrop also exists as Mono doing as Mono does. However, that’s not a black and white bad thing. There are plenty of achingly beautiful and heartfelt moments on their latest record. Unfortunately, they sacrificed some of the character, variety and genuine majesty of
Oath and inserted some unimaginative post rock in place of it.
Snowdrop may be a step downward, but the band exhibits some grandiose highs along the way. For instance, “Hedera” sees the band at their career best and at their most concise. With patience, like a river flowing into a waterfall, the song climaxes into a vast array of lush piano, alluring tremolos and massive drumming. Its short length of under five minutes makes the song more accessible as well and the same can be said for “Statice.” It’s tight length helps strengthen the song. The band made use of magical textures, epic sounding drums and the one two punches of “Statice” and “Hedera” showcase their sound at their greatest. On the other hand, it’s also where the cracks and stagnation begin to show.
The cracks show up in the form of a played-out sound and each song audibly just a bit too similar to each other. The title track sees the band being as twinkly and simmering as ever. Despite the audio pleasantry, their dense forest of guitar and string textures emits hope as the embers settle. Depending on how patient the listener is and their amount of love for post rock, this could come off as a bit too earnest and reminiscent of previous work. These flaws rear their heads in “Bells Of Ireland” as well, due to the songwriting choice of not evolving beyond easy to listen to piano and string arrangements.
The inconsistency continues throughout the album in a scatterbrained manner. “Shion” sees Mono exhibiting a cosmic aura of perfect progression and determination in sound. The spacey guitars, colossal drumming and subtle choir showcases the band exceedingly at their most interesting. Meanwhile, “Winter Daphne” doesn’t impress at all. In fact, the guitar melodies refuse to mesh as well as they should in the production. Make no mistake that
Snowdrop is an album of peaks and valleys.
It’s rather disappointing to follow up such a return to form like
Oath with an album so painstakingly scatterbrained. Mono accidentally made an album that has great songs and decent ones alternating with each other. It’s problematic in a post rock album with a concise number of songs and with a vast discography of mild greatness. This discography has some masterpieces, but it also comes with a fair few missteps. Thankfully, there are no surprise vocals, screams or post metal sections out of nowhere. This leaves
Snowdrop in that camp where it won’t impress most post rock listeners. That said, songs like “Hedera” and “Shion” are well worth any avid music listeners' time.
