Cassette Review // reaches "The Land is Kind" (Crass Lips Records)

$7 //
https://iloveyou.bandcamp.com/album/the-land-is-kind //

This cassette begins with a song which has these Doogie Howser vibes but it's also this synthwave type of song.   It reminds me of The Consolation Project but yet it has its own sound as well, as the keys come in.   In some ways I just feel like this a few different sounds blended together to make one sound- like three bands playing at once- but it just works.

The second song has some angelic guitar strums while the third really picks up in that synth way- which reminds me of something from that era of "The Breakfast Club".    Over a really great rhythm on "Stop Cycle" (which does remind me a bit of Blue October) the lyrics are about lying in bed for days and wanting nothing, though it also got nothing, and nothing changed and that is just such a good way to look at everything (even though I did one of those long sleeps yesterday)

There is a lot of music in "The Forest Provides Air", perhaps more than words, and then the next song comes out with some big beats.    At times this reminds me of Illegal Wiretaps, but there is also just such a great dance type of beat to this song as it asks us about the past and future.   During "History Longer Than Ourselves" there is a line repeated which says "It's not you or me / It's all of us" and I feel like that's such an important lesson to be reflected upon right now.

During the final song the drums hit like New Order while the vocals come through in a higher pitched way, like an alien in some ways but it also reminds me of something out of the 1980's, which a lot of this cassette does.