by rick olivares
It has been six years since dream
pop duo Outerhope’s last effort, an extended play album titled, No End In Sight.
Nine, if it is full length albums we are talking about and that was 2009’s A
Day for the Absent. Now, vacation is over and all Outerhope got for us music
fans is a wonderful new album, simply titled… Vacation.
Released on vinyl by American
label, Shelflife Records (the swell folks who released Filipino band Some
Gorgeous Accident’s bittersweet swan song, The Lovers of their Opposites), Outerhope’s
Vacation is available in limited quantities. If I am reading it right, there
are only 200 copies available and are equally divided in silver and pink vinyl.
So you should get a copy post-haste.
Outerhope for me, has always been
a band you really clear your mind and listen to or else you will not appreciate
the music that fuels your emotions and imagination. Vacation, for all the
personal upheavals of siblings Micaela and Michael Benedicto, is no different.
Tough times tend to lead to some
beautiful songs. And while the songs still drip of pain, and the introspection
that comes with it, the new album finds the duo moving forward. In fact, Vacation
glistens with optimism.
Somehow, the album sounds like a
cousin to Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation soundtrack that was a love letter
to Japan, complicated relationships, French music, shoegaze, and well, new
romantics. Vacation has that same vibe – a travelogue with the songs like a
soundtrack; the songs, signposts or even postcards. To crib Everything But the
Girl – like ballads for the times.
There is that hodge podge of
rhythms that start off like its taking you to the atmosphere. And before you
float away, you’re reeled back in for a quiet interludes and even trippy
numbers.
More the Lost In Translation
feel, even the interludes of Vacation give you the same feeling as Air’s “Alone
in Kyoto,” Brian Reitzell’s “Shibuya,” and Kevin Shields’ “Are You Awake?”
And the hauntingly beautiful “Airways”
starts off like Death In Vegas’ “Girls.”
“Catapulco,” a trippy
effervescent instrumental has that feel of Lost In Translation’s “Kaze Wo
Atsumete” by Happy End.
I am not suggesting that Vacation
is a copycat album. Vacation are songs of an accidental tourist; songs perhaps
written during travels or in a state of moving on. You know how you get on a
bus and are heading out on the road? The music, no matter, how different they
sound, flow into one another. The songs whet your excitement and heightens your
sense of adventure as they take flight. Just like the first single, “Holiday,” that
was released last year online. It builds from something slow and into something
that bursts into the sunlight. And coincidentally or not, the final track is
titled, “Boarding Area” and it’s like a siren call for adventure or hope.
And that is Outerhope.
You know how it is said that
during tough times or when you’re in “Badlands”, one needs to take a break or a
vacation to find one’s resolve again or to recharge? Through tragedy and pain,
they have found their voice again. And what a voice. Take a Vacation; the album
that is.
Visas not needed.
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