Slept on
I'm not sure who qualifies as "missing out" on Port-Royal's debut (does anyone obsessively collect this kind of instrumental guitar music the same way some people get deep into obtuse techno or hard-edged rap or cryptic indie or whatever?), but whoever they are it's getting pretty obvious as time passes that they're missing something big. Or actually not, which is part of its charm for me; as I sort-of kind-of tried (or at least meant to try) to get at in my review, there's something a bit more humble and lived in about the scope of Flares. It's long and open skied, of course, but it never feels like it's trying to push the Sublime on you, which naturally means it winds up much closer to the sublime than its more pushy siblings.
Unlike most of its American/British contemporaries it has no problem trading in rock grit and distortion for gleaming Italian/European modernist sheen, but even with that this is less a record that calls to mind windswept landscapes and burning spaceships (or whatever your preferred visual metaphors for sweeping grandiosity and ridiculous but thrilling apocalypse are) than one that brings to mind a nice warm bath and slowly falling asleep. Which probably is at least partially down to my comfort level with this kind of music, but I don't think anyone acquainted with Godspeed, Mogwai, Slint, et al on down to someone like Explosions In The Sky is going to find this as aggressively widescreen as even the best of that breed tend to be - sometimes ludicrously so, as with The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place which is so "epic" that it works, but in kind of a weird way. Flares feels less urgent, as if the music is just happening rather than Happening, if you know what I mean.
I still wish they sequenced "Zobione" and "Flares" as one track each, because this is definitely a record that is mercilessly cruel to excerpters; either you're in it for the full 77 or you're not going to like it at all. And any follow-ups may not be up to this standard - Flares is the cream of five years of work by a rough collective; of course they're going to spike it full of their best moments of warmth and shine. Still the pick of the completely random promos I got (and got to) last year, and a record which I'll probably bitterly regret leaving out of my top 20 as time continues to pass. I kind of wonder what the reception for it would be like if it was American and thus was heard by much of anybody.
Unlike most of its American/British contemporaries it has no problem trading in rock grit and distortion for gleaming Italian/European modernist sheen, but even with that this is less a record that calls to mind windswept landscapes and burning spaceships (or whatever your preferred visual metaphors for sweeping grandiosity and ridiculous but thrilling apocalypse are) than one that brings to mind a nice warm bath and slowly falling asleep. Which probably is at least partially down to my comfort level with this kind of music, but I don't think anyone acquainted with Godspeed, Mogwai, Slint, et al on down to someone like Explosions In The Sky is going to find this as aggressively widescreen as even the best of that breed tend to be - sometimes ludicrously so, as with The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place which is so "epic" that it works, but in kind of a weird way. Flares feels less urgent, as if the music is just happening rather than Happening, if you know what I mean.
I still wish they sequenced "Zobione" and "Flares" as one track each, because this is definitely a record that is mercilessly cruel to excerpters; either you're in it for the full 77 or you're not going to like it at all. And any follow-ups may not be up to this standard - Flares is the cream of five years of work by a rough collective; of course they're going to spike it full of their best moments of warmth and shine. Still the pick of the completely random promos I got (and got to) last year, and a record which I'll probably bitterly regret leaving out of my top 20 as time continues to pass. I kind of wonder what the reception for it would be like if it was American and thus was heard by much of anybody.
