Sweeping Promises - You Say I Romanticize

Sweeping Promises - You Say I Romanticize

Words: David Carr

The essential duo of guitarist Caulfield Schnaug and bassist/vocalist Lira Mondal have drafted in touring drummer Spenser Gralla to record the album. Their chamber-recording method is an acoustic technique that uses a dedicated, highly reflective physical room—an echo chamber—to create natural artificial reverberation and give it the immediate, live sound.

Album opener and single ‘Shooting Shadows’ will instantly acquaint you with Mondal’s throat-shredding vocal delivery. It is always balanced, however, with an endearing embrace of melody. My favourite, ‘My Friend’s An Entomologist’, is a brilliant politically charged tune and informs much of the album’s theme.

They often use an isolated baseline to open their tracks, but in ‘Last Man’, the later breakdown feels like winding up a coiled spring ready to unleash the final portion of the song. Politically again, ‘Rapture, Or…’ I believe speaks to the day that he’s finally gone. ‘Cocoon’ features the distortion and janky guitar riffs you associate with Fugazi. The lyrics on ‘Accent’ are conjured thus: “Out of my mouth like bees, words fall, and they don’t land” like a female David Byrne fronting The Pixies (Am I describing The Breeders?) ‘Write Lightly’ finishes off proceedings in perfect fashion, explaining the imperative, almost frenzy of writing their songs, “gotta get this down”, fighting the machine “‘cause machines like this, they’re too big to fail, you just don’t stop it all at once”. Also alluding to the light touch of having to interpret rather than having things writ large.

https://sweepingpromises.bandcamp.com/album/you-say-i-romanticize