This record’s Vocoder-featuring opening title track hovers like a UFO collecting data: “We’re letting go /Let’s flow where the rivers flow/ And heal /The more we search the more we feel…”
Enter inquisitive synth lines until a belated drop, around the three-minute mark, ushers in oscillating, danceable bliss.
Listening to vocalist/keyboardist Ben Woolner sing is an actual wellness tool. His distinctive, yearning timbre regularly cascades before leaping octaves to attain thrillingly unexpected peaks.
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“Maybe your entire life is a kind of dream” – ponders The Now, tapping into this album’s surreal quality. Warning: once Today’s gently pulsating beat gets under your skin, it’s impossible to shake off. The chorus sounds like popping candy: “today”, separated into two syllables, bounces around and repeats ‘til the word becomes unrecognisable.
Falling Down, a song about “constantly pouring your heart and soul into something and feeling like you’re getting nowhere, yet you push on anyway”, evokes skillful trampoline gymnastics playing out in slow-mo.
Woolner penned Fall Right Back To You’s lyrics the very day his long-term relationship ended (“I don’t love you/ I need to let you go”). Downtempo and downhearted, Maybe It’s Time – which follows – continues this breakup theme: “I guess we should say our goodbyes…”
“So where do we go from here?” – closer Season Changing shifts towards acceptance, with hopeful melodies and a reassuring beat, until instrumentation peters out and we’re ultimately left with just Woolner singing a pensive, solitary tune.
A Lover’s Guide To A Lucid Dream is an interplanetary good vibe zone (thanks, Jamiroquai).
LABEL: WARNER
RELEASE: OUT NOW
