A Walk By the Creek (with Chastity Belt)

As previously noted, the seasons finally changed from summer to autumn here in Georgia.  Yesterday was a cool, overcast and, dare I say it?, almost Pacific Northwest kind of day, and I enjoyed it, in part, by walking along Tanyard Creek (above) with a pair of earbuds plugged into my iPod, listening to the new self-titled LP from the Seattle band Chastity Belt.

It's a good, moody album, possibly the perfect listen for a long, solo walk on a cool, overcast day.  It's a different sound for Chastity Belt, a change from the pop-ish guitar rock of earlier songs like 2013's Seattle Party:

The new songs are slower, drenched in reverb and more inwardly reflective than before, more dream-pop than jangle pop, like the opening track Ann's Jam:

The charm of the new album, and simultaneously the problem with the album, is that every song on the new LP is at the same pace and they all sound quite a bit alike after a while.  Perfect for setting and maintaining a mood, not so great if you're looking for range and dynamism in your music.

To be clear, I like the new album, a lot, but more for the near ambient chill the LP creates, than for an incentive to party down.

The album got a fairly good review on Pitchfork (7.1), but most of the review focused not on the sound of the music, but on the lyrics of the songs.  I, for one, rarely approach rock albums as works of literature.  Sure, the words in a song have to say something, but I'm more interested in how they contribute to the overall sound than to what they explicitly have to say.  There's always exceptions that prove the rule, but to me it's usually about the music, not the lyrics.  But Pitchfork's review is five paragraphs in length, and the first four are all about the contents of the lyrics, like they were reviewing a book of poetry, and it's only in the closing paragraph that they note, almost as an afterthought, that yeah, it's a new and different sound for Chastity Belt, and the LP creates one long sustained mood throughout.

Chastity Belt will be performing at Atlanta's 529 on Tuesday, November 19.

Anyway, short version, I took a long walk yesterday.