181: Vines - I'll Be Here

Yesterday I asked a friend how they felt about Sundays, if it felt like an outlier to them, slightly skewed when compared to the rest, if and how it carries its own unique kind of weight. I think it does. I think also that the same can be said for a Monday morning, particularly this Monday morning, for me, that is both an end and a start, and a hazy mid-point between the two.

On this morning morning, outside my window, Monday hangs full of grey and heavy with cloud. The hills I can often see from my window are buried somewhere within. The air is thick and far too warm – it needs thunder to break it apart. Everything feels slightly out of place, nothing quite sits as it should.

Through this malaise, perhaps from this malaise, comes the aching sound of Vines, whose very special new album was just released into the world last week. The project of New York-based composer and multi-instrumentalist Cassie Wieland, the music here is gloomy and swallowing, a kind of ambient unraveling that finds just enough shimmer to keep the whole thing from collapsing in on itself.

The most obvious (and perhaps lazy) comparison is Grouper, but there are other seeds here too; the mesmerising wash of Sea Oleena comes to mind often. I'll Be Here, in its ten winding sonic soundscapes, feels absolutely of its own creation though, a whole world it seems to construct constructing a whole world of its own across just 35 minutes that often feels two, or three times longer than that.

Led, just about, by Wieland's voice, a distant half-lit torch in a sea of fog, the songs here also comprise of percussion, cello, violin, saxophone and more and its the spare moments when that otherness breaks through when this all becomes something very special indeed. Take the closing track, the title-track also, where the whole things comes closest to either breaking apart or bursting into life. There's a real edge to that battle, something intense and wholly captivating that means the album departs with a mesmerising flourish, not just a dormant hint of light through the surrounding murkiness, but an offering too.

I'll Be Here is out now, buy it on Bandcamp here

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