This album is a writhing storm. Created by the Brooklyn duo of Aleksa Palladina and Devon Church, the album follows their successful 2011 EP From Silence. Exitmusic’s Passage is a safe way through a dark time.
Here is an album with one resolute goal. It blends ten tracks like movements of a symphony. We follow its course, unwittingly absorbing its anxious impressions along the way.
Gentle in its sadness, Passage is without doubt filled with anger, self-pity, depression and resignation, and sometimes struggles to add the balancing measure of optimism. However, the cloud-like pace of the tracks and the airily angelic vocals lift us from the cesspit of tumult that exists within the album. There is an element of shoegaze in this album, but I feel that the shoes in this type of shoegaze are leaden.
The backdrop to Passage is its production, which is vague, vast and varied, yet hugely important to the album as the plethora of sounds we hear fit so congruently that we unknowingly find joy in the impression that it paints. Take for instance the outro of ‘Storms’, we are faced with an electronic wind that is easy to ignore, but will always be absorbed. We would notice if it wasn’t there. That, I believe is the goal of the whole album, to create an impression in ten tracks, that soaks beneath our skin, and gives us something more than music to tap our feet to. It is a concept album and a definite rarity in times of singles and downloads.
