Underwater Over There＜Oceania Blue Vinyl＞

Unwed Sailor have been honing their (mostly) instrumental post-rock approach since their 1998 formation, cultivating a sound around leader and sole consistent member Johnathon Fords emotionally restless, bass-driven compositions. Ninth album Underwater Over There is the bands fourth full-length release (fifth if you include hard-to-categorize 2020 release Look Alive) since coming back from a brief hiatus with 2019s Heavy Age, and it continues the streak of self-discovery and inventiveness that Ford and company have been on since then. Unwed Sailor has long tied in elements of shoegaze guitar bending and angular, non-traditional song structuring, and those pieces of the bands sound are alive and well throughout Underwater Over There. Opening track "Dusty" introduces the song with Fords melodic, Peter Hook-nodding bassline set to a charging beat before bringing in bright acoustic guitars, layers of counter-melodizing synths and lead guitars, and eventually blanketing the entire arrangement in washed-out fuzz. The best songs teeter between early 90s Midwestern emo and classic college rock jangle pop and goth. "Final Feather" tips all the way to the college rock side of things, with a lovelorn chord progression and a melodramatic flair that heavily evokes the Cure circa Wish, Echo & the Bunnymen, or even lesser-known downtrodden pop masters like the Lightning Seeds or Gene. This is all delivered with Fords unique, low-end songwriting sensibilities, keeping the album from feeling overly nostalgic. The title track slows the pace, filling out a yearning bass pattern and minimal drum machine rhythm with different shades of synthesizer padding and slowly building guitar lines. "Antoinette" is a bit more experimental, with a jagged time signature, blitzed-out live drum sounds, and a breakdown into starry-eyed psychedelia. There are detours into drifty ambient tones on "Skylight" and "Bend the Air," and the seven-minute-long "Junko" goes somewhere entirely different than most of the album, winding through spartan drum machine beats, phaser-doused bass, and an arrangement that gradually introduces the unexpected combination of childlike synth melodies and frenzied percussion grooves. The vivid range of expression and approaches on Underwater Over There is no surprise given Unwed Sailors long and untarnished track record, but its exciting to hear the band stay so consistently fresh and inspired this deep into their catalog. ~ Fred Thomas