Wave

In the interim between the releases of 2015s Love Songs for Robots and 2019s Wave, Patrick Watson lost his mother and ended a long-term relationship. The Canadian singer/songwriter and film composers music has always hewed towards the spectral, but with Wave, his eighth full-length effort, Watson has crafted his most incorporeal collection of songs to date. Built on themes of loss and uncertainty, the ten-track set parses the hushed in-between moments of suffering and crystallizes them into unambiguous declarations of intent. I never thought youd ever really be gone confides Watson on the billowing soft-rock opener Dream for Dreaming. Its a sentiment that receives frequent callbacks, both lyrically and sonically, throughout Waves just-under-40-minute runtime, with every undulating swell of strings and cascading melody suggesting the treading of water. The aptly named Melody Noir plays out like a procedural, with Watson pleading tell me where the wind is blowing cause thats where the musics going in a falsetto that gets increasingly despondent as his quarry pulls further and further away. Mid-album highlight Broken builds to a dizzying and cathartic crescendo, but not before coming to terms with the pain thats inflicted on both parties during the mirthless days that precede a breakup. There are some glitchy electronic beats and questionable structural turns during the albums back half that feel a little bit out of place, but the overall vibe remains one of deep and heavy existential pain. Wave is an acutely overcast album, but Watsons gift for melody, narrative lucidity, and retro-pop sensibilities help to keep things more melancholic than maudlin. ~ James Christopher Monger