"To sleep, perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub."
Hamlet (III, i, 65-68)
Man's relationship to his dreams has been the subject of his art forever. Nothing else seems so beyond our realm of control yet so integrally personal - it is us but outside of us. And so, myriad records have been made in reflection of that ponderous relationship. The Constellation Branch's debut full length, The Dream Life, The Real Life, The Empty Glass, is another document of this struggle to go down in the annals of Morpheus and mankind.
To begin with, the organic structure of the record mimics the dream process lucidly to me, which deserves an accolade itself. For a band whose first record just came out to show that kind of maturity and foresight into the construction of their album is impressive in a way that surpasses the effort of any other band I can think of. The album rolls with lulls and peaks, vacillating from the ethereal to the ephemeral effortlessly like the last moments of consciousness escaping as the lights go out. To be able to extract that from a record at all is testament to its worthiness to be heard.
And the music itself conveys that relationship between the Land of Nod and the Earth itself exceptionally well - going from textured post-rock of Mogwai or Envy to the catchy immediacy of Cave In's later material. I don't think the satisfaction of hearing effect-laden meandering erupting into a big riff will ever wane for me, especially when it's done in a more evocative way than the whole "quiet-loud-quiet-loud" dynamic which has been the crutch of an entire genre. Maybe it's the fact that the riffs have a very unique surf-rock feel to me that stops it from being stale and moves it into its own entity.
The only thing hindering the record for me comes from the fact that when the guitars kick and and want to bring you back to life from the dream-like passages - it just doesn't completely happen. I want the guitars to soar and instead they glide along with what was going on before. Perhaps we've all been too spoiled from the proliferation of slick production jobs which are as common as photoshopped band logos, but I just want a little bit more liveliness out of the guitars. Other than that, everything is exceptionally solid and well-placed.
The Constellation Branch is exciting since it shows that there is some life left in a scene bloated with post-rock band whose idea of song writing revolves around nothing but riff repetition while increasing the volume of the music. That stopped feeling dynamic quite a while ago. But, at the same time, I wouldn't put them entirely alongside Mono or Explosions in the Sky - I guess the closest approximation I could give would be mewithoutYou's punk sensibility reinterpreting Radiohead's tactile moments. But, rest assured (pun intended) this is its own beast.
