Deafheaven – Lonely People With Power

vote
7.0

• Band:
  Deafheaven
• Duration: 01:02:20
• Available from: 28/03/2025
• Label:

• Roadrunner Records

Streaming not yet available

With “Lonely People With Power”, the Deafheaveven return to weave the sounds that made them a reference point for that blackgaze vein that they themselves contributed to coin and populate with their first outings, recovering part of that more metallic ardor that characterized the pre- “infinite granite” works. Of the last, softer and airy, record chapter, the tendency to compose a little more compact songs in the duration, sometimes more close to the so -called song form, is maintained, even if, in some part, that feeling of volatility, of stream of conscious, remains, which has practically always characterized the formation.
Certainly, however, “Lonely …” is an album that lives above all of episodes characterized by a certain essentiality: from the early bars, a will emerges to concentrate energy and to dose the dreamlike openings with greater sparing. This translates into a more direct listening, which allows to grasp more immediacy the contrasts and dynamics internal to the individual tracks. Therefore, a little of that dreamy climax that has kissed many pearls of discography is lost, to make room for a verve that in some cases leaves no large space for superstructures or who knows what refinement – see a compact and angry piece like “Magnolia”, or a trace like “Heathen”, whose chiaroscuro at the strictly structural level, more the alternation of the clean/screen, are not so far from something Dark tranquility, although here the sound and stylistic context is obviously very different.
In this sense, the touch of guitarist Kerry McCoy remains unmistakable, just as the tested contrast between the plots and melodies of post-rock and shoegaze with the Screaming of George Clarke emerges. In general, it can be said that the album does not fail to present all the key characteristics of the Deafheaveaven proposal, even if conducted through greater compositional discipline, a sort of self -control that precisely limits the most sumptuous and dilated explorations.
An approach that inevitably also brings with it some questions: if on the one hand “Lonely …” offers immediately interesting episodes such as “Amethyst”, the blinding “Revelator”, the equally rhythmic “Body Behavior”, “Winona” – which resumes with conviction the vastness of the old compositions – or the Dream Pop torn by stiletto metal of “The Marvelus The Marvelus Orange Tree ”, on the other hand it leaves the feeling that some songs, of a very inspired basic, have undergone an excessive streamlining work, losing that ability to drag the listener into prolonged emotional vortices. Summary and compactness can certainly facilitate the effectiveness of the disc, as a whole, but at the same time they risk subtracting depth and resonance from the traces, especially for those who have loved the richest and most stratified sound travels of the past.
“Lonely …” therefore represents a return that, while maintaining all in all, welds the identity of the Americans, plays on different balances than their most iconic works. The desire to make everything more direct and incisive is evident and could prove to be a winning choice in the live field, however the doubt remains on how much this new structure in songwriting can withstand the comparison with the most ambitious peaks of their discography.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h_wvpsomwu