There are certain words I’m sure Seattle’s Snowdrift must be sick of hearing. “Ethereal” would be one; “Dreamy” another. “Woozy” and “Haunting” may also have cropped up in casual conversation. Tough. The high-court judge in me thinks that if you make records that sound like a swarm of bees trapped in an empty corn-silo, you’re asking for it!
While it would be hard to claim that you’ve never heard anything like “Starry all Over” I would timidly suggest that you’ve rarely heard it done so well. There’s an attention to detail here, an arranging ability that marks it out from Snowdrift’s dream-pop contemporaries. “Little Roar” sees drones, bubbling synths, Theremins and space-ships backing up around a boom-chick bassline. The opener “Secrets” pops a chamber quartet into a meat-locker and lets a passing somnambulist free-style on the m.i.c.
This is big music. Julian Cope heard Danish farmsteads and endless frosted horizons on Snowdrift’s eponymous first album, but then he would: he worships Odin. Songs like “Ninth Transmigration” and “Sky Scrape Sea” (a great lost A.R. Kane title there!) are like sonic diastrophism; the sound of land masses breaking off into the sea. But for me it’s the quieter moments, like the jazzy “Howl Snow” or “Those Nights” where Kat Terran’s voice, suddenly denuded of echo, is revealed to be a beautiful and expressive thing, that seem to suggest a way forward.
The album may not be starry all over, but it is undeniably stellar in places.
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