Music Review // Alice Costelloe "Move On With the Year"

https://alcostelloe.bandcamp.com/album/move-on-with-the-year

  "Move On With the Year" feels like as much of a message in one of the songs as it is spread out across all of the songs.  You'll hear themes in here about places like hospitals and whether it's addiction or an illness of some kind, this just feels like an album about someone who is unwell.  The way that Alice Costelloe can have these songs come together to form one overall theme yet still feel important enough on their own is just something truly amazing that not enough artists do.

This starts off sounding like it has big pianos, but I think they're really synths.  From moderate rock to pop, the one thing you will tend to hear throughout this album are the little bits of sound which aren't the way other artists might sound.  There is a flute in a lot of this, and a lot of times it can even take over and command the sound, but just hearing these alien-like synths in "How Can I" makes these songs stand out.  "Of Course I Know" is another great example of how you can find the magic within this music.

The titular track has a lot of lyrics which likely need to be studied to fully understand the album.  But one thing this album does well is have lyrics which start off making you think one thing but then turn into another.   This is apparent in the lyrics: "I've been watching my friends / dropping like flies / Walking down the aisle / Tears in their eyes"  At first you might think that they're "dropping like flies" because they're dying but then you realize they're just off getting married.  This hits especially hard on "Every Time" which says "It's too late"- making you think the person being visited at the hospital is dead, but then it comes back with visitor hours being over.  

Somewhere between Slothrust and Pollyscattergood, a little bit of Neon Trees and that extra bit of something I can't quite put my finger on, Alice Costello has made an album that can feel like chill rock with mellow pacing.  It's not quite pop, but it's out of this world.   By the time we get to "If I Could Reach You" we can hear more of that melody as a tribute to the 1990's rock, but overall this just feels like it's taking some existing formula for making great rock songs, adding in a bit of their own special blend and then combining them for one conclusive story that you really need to hear and experience for yourself.