Beach Sloth

Imploded View - Picnics With Pylons 7.9

                Imploded View lives in a cloudy world. Even the hopeful songs here reside in a fog. This is extremely emotional music. ‘Picnics with Pylons’ offer the finest of downbeat music. Heaven forbid anything moves remotely quickly. In this universe everything dwells. Melodically Imploded View takes the right approach. A lot of this slowly sinks into the mind without the listener even realizing it. One day it simply seeps in and will never let go. 

                Calms set over all these songs. Generally the songs fall into two categories: either the miserably lonely or cautiously optimistic. ‘Can Drift Would Drift’ is a case in point. The swell of sound loops, growing stronger with every bit of repetition. ‘That’s Thrift’ shows a debt to shoegaze as it sounds completely and utterly gone. Actually this is one of the better of the more ‘positive’ songs. In the lonely songs the tempo is slowed down even further, down to the barest of beats. The title track is one of these songs, but the best of the lonely tracks (perhaps of the album) is ‘We Ivy’. Here the beat barely moves. A few times the song falls into near silence. These moments of near-pure silence are particularly moving. Even with such a simple melody they remain effective at getting their point across of extreme emptiness. 

                This is a varied approach but ultimately effective. Imploded View goes down a more psychedelic route towards the end of the album with songs like ‘Through those Clouds’. It lingers for a while. As it progresses the music takes on a more and more mournful quality. ‘Picnics with Pylons’ is an emotionally charged album.