Album by Manderley
There is a lot of music packed into You Come in Seasons and Depart Through Windy Gusts and Blowing Leaves.
Manderley’s 14-song album runs a little over an hour, but even that doesn’t quite capture how big it feels. Songs bleed into one another. Nine-, ten- and thirteen-minute tracks change direction several times before they’re finished. Punk turns into power pop, which crashes into noise rock, slows down for something introspective and then blows up all over again.
At times, a single track can feel like five songs stitched together. The whole thing feels like an opus. A rough-around-the-edges, very indie one.
Emo probably sits somewhere near the center of Manderley’s sound, but the album keeps reaching outward from there. There’s punk, power pop, slacker rock, noise rock, fuzzy guitars, quieter acoustic passages and even stretches of dreamy synths and psychedelia.
The songs deal with isolation, burnout, infatuation, loss, relationships ending, looking backward and feeling directionless. There’s also a recurring urge to escape, whether that means escaping tour life, another person, the past or yourself. Fantasy can offer somewhere to hide, but it can also become its own trap.
The funny thing is that the music isn’t necessarily slow or miserable. Much of the album moves with a ton of energy. It can be fast, catchy, grimy and destructive, with vocals that push from an affected punk whine into a sing-scream without ever really becoming hardcore.
“Run Away! They Say While Remaining Perfectly Still” is a good early example. It barrels along on punk and power-pop energy, with what sounds like a playful organ running through the noise. The vocals move between singing and screaming as the song throws itself forward.
“And Still They Stayed” leans harder into power pop, shifting between loud and introspective passages. It starts climbing again and then slows itself back down.
“The Museum Is More Fun When I Get to Show You Around” begins softly before opening into noisy guitars and hard-hitting drums. Even then, it remains one of the album’s more restrained and introspective tracks.
Then there’s the nearly ten-minute “Your Eyes! (Only Created to Express Happiness),” which stretches fuzzy indie rock into something much larger. It gets noisy. It slows down. It builds again. Different sections come and go until it starts to feel like one long movement rather than a traditional song.
“It’s a Fantasy Until You Want To Leave” initially has the backbone of a punk song, chugging forward until everything drops into a quieter section halfway through. Then it blows up again.
“Path Finders” mixes power pop and punk before wandering into noise rock, while “How Wrong Was I?” is notable almost because it doesn’t do that. It’s one of the few songs that mostly picks a direction—straightforward pop-punk—and sticks with it.
“Tired Eyes See Letter, Not Words” pushes further into emo, while “Warm Winds… Inbound!!!” bounces along with bright power-pop energy. “…The Best Dare I Ever Won” heads back toward high-energy punk and noisy rock.
“You Were…” finally strips much of that away. It’s almost acoustic punk: slower and lower without turning into a ballad. For once, the noise largely disappears.
But the album doesn’t truly stop to take a breath until “The World Is Unkind!” The six-minute track is a real shift, built around synths, a low vocal and a dreamy, almost ambient atmosphere. Eventually psychedelic textures and fuzzy feedback begin creeping into the edges.
The song finds a moment of escape before confronting the fact that eventually you have to come back down.
“Savor These Moments. These Final Moments.” runs for 13 minutes and feels like the entire album compressed into one enormous song. Punk, noise, quieter passages and everything in between keep appearing and disappearing.
The closing “Miss Copper” starts lower and more acoustic before winding itself into something that sounds like punk colliding with circus music. It builds, winds up and drops.
There’s a lot I find interesting about You Come in Seasons and Depart Through Windy Gusts and Blowing Leaves. I like how rough around the edges it is. I like that Manderley is willing to let songs get noisy, fall apart, rebuild themselves and head somewhere completely different. Even when the songs are catchy, there’s grime underneath them.
This is an ambitious, deeply restless album. Manderley throws just about everything they have at it.
Verdict: Worth a Spin
Explore more from Manderley
Leave a Reply