Halloween, Alaska
Halloween, alaska This quartet came together from a handful of other bands in the Minneapolis area. Their eponymous debut was locally released in 2003, but continued and growing college radio play, combined with having a couple of the tracks (”All the Arms Around you” and “Des Moines”) featured on the popular TV show The O.C., has brought forth this new, enhanced edition. The ethereal bearing of the eight songs reveal layers of textures and arrangement details, as the slowly paced rhythms expand to their appropriate lengths for more than an hour of music. James Diers’ vocals have a lilting sonority that allows the melodies to float in and out of the the surrounding accompaniment, sometimes for the foreground lyrical components, other times as another color in their gorgeous tapestry. –David Greenberger
Customer Review: buried treasure (best experienced with headphones)…
how this has managed to fly beneath the radar for so long is astonishing.
‘well hello, little hellion. make yourself at home.’ so opens halloween, alaska’s debut album, the postal service’s older, more sophisticated (and interesting) brother. it’s a compelling and ultimately emotionally endearing little piece of ear candy. comparison’s the ben gibbard’s side project are perhaps inevitable (and even understandable), but anyone wanting to compare the two (or cast off halloween, alaska prematurely) does him or herself a serious disservice.
what strikes the listener in the intimacy and immediacy. James Dier’s vocals aren’t the strongest, but they womp you over the head with the emotionaly integrity and vulnerability blatantly absent from the majority of vocalists these days. the melodies, while not immediately memorable, manage to linger in your head and when you find yourself humming the melody three or four days later, it’ll sound familiar, but you might not be able to immediately place it. it’s deceptive in a way. it’s at once familiar and completely new original. this sort of beautiful and understated subtlety seems to be halloween, alaska’s mantra, and thank heaven’s for it. it’s almost as if fellow mid-westerners, Low, turned electronic.
in short, beautiful, lush, engaging music you can listen to repeatedly without ever tiring of it. in a day of throw-away pop songs, it’s not small feat. and you’d be well-served to listen to the album with headphones to pick up all the subtle nuances, bells, and whistles.
hopefully this is the beginning of a long and fruitful career.
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