God Is An Astronaut "Origins"

Country: Ireland
Sub Genre: Post Rock
Label: Rocket Girl
Release date: September 16, 2013
Tracklist: 
TBA

Line-up: 
Niels Kinsella - bass
Torsten Kinsella - vocals, guitar, effects and synths
Lloyd Hanney - drums
Jamie Dean - piano/synths
Gazz Carr - guitar
   With
Pat O’Donnell - vocals, guitar and keyboards

Description/Reviews: 

God is an Astronaut consider each of their albums to be a sonic ‘photograph or snapshot of who we are in that moment of time’ and Origins is perhaps their most saturated, striking snapshot to date.Comprising a dozen tracks, the band’s seventh full-length album fluctuates from controlled ferment (‘Calistoga’) to plaintive, piano-led reverie (‘Autumn Song’) to rhapsodic, unapologetically melodic fever (‘Signal Rays’) while never losing its focus. A wide spectrum of emotions are conjured over the course of the album and, while half of the tracks feature vocals, the voices have been laden with resonant swathes of effects so as to retain a similar ambiguity to the instrumentals. It is this ambiguity that lends Origins its power. The song titles are evocative but never prescriptive: for instance, a southern Californian town is suggested in ‘Calistoga’ while the effect-fogged lyrics speak of finding light in a seemingly hopeless situation. Perseverance in times of emotional hardship appears to be the overriding theme of Origins, though it has always been the juxtaposition of seemingly disparate sounds, words and visuals that afford GIAA their singularity. The listener’s interpretation of the music is as valid as the emotions that inspired the band to make it.
The album’s more vocal-led, experimental guitar approach is due in no small part to The Fountainhead frontman, who co-wrote many of the songs alongside Torsten.
Although sounding like GIAA the new album features a new vocal direction & a more experimental guitar approach. Experimenting with ‘a multitude of stompboxes’, the newly bolstered line-up gives the songs an added richness, apparent on Origins perhaps most obviously on the first single, ‘Spiral Code’. The guitars twist and tangle joyously over a backdrop of energetic beats and hi-hats, creating a sound that could just as easily bring feet to a dancefloor as it could bring solace to someone listening in solitude. All in all, Origins is a sublime, multifaceted album, parading a sound which has been painstakingly honed and is as forward-looking as it is faithful to the band’s own origins and influences eleven years back.

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