While most musicians spend their youth looking for that perfect three chord combination to unlock their self-loathing, ABAB pentameter rhyme scheming, guitar, bass, drum/verse, chorus, verse angst filled masterpiece Julian Lynch did not. He was woodshedding it, mastering scales, alternate tunings, atypical time signatures, brass, strings, woodwinds AND percussion. Words are cheap and often get in the way so for his fourth full length release Lines, Lynch is sparing with the cheap semantics of dimestore poets. Instead the void is filled to the brim with interweaving melodic grandeur, thought provoking dynamic rhythms, and the pure collage joy of ambient obscurium. The results are delectable.
If I had to describe the sound in terms of contemporary musicians Lines lilts towards the instrumentals of Ugly Casanova‘s Sharpen Your Teeth. In parts, I found a semblance to approach comparable to Sufjan Stevens in that the attack is intelligent, yet appreciable to laymen. While thought provoking, Mr. Lynch’s abundance of instrumentation rarely lags, and minus the focusing power of lyrics one regains the original concept of music insomuch as emotion can be inspired without by the wholly artificial provocations of sound.
Lines plays out like a fever dream or extended auditory hallucination. From the opening bars of the first track “Going”–in which it seems an orchestra is cuing up for performance–to the epic eight minute closer “Shadow,” the audience is left with that age old question: “Is true art meant to be enjoyed?” For Julian Lynch’s work on Lines, the answer is decidedly yes.
Rating: 7.0/10
MP3: Julian Lynch “Horse Chestnut”
Buy: iTunes or Insound! vinyl
