The Unravelling is a wonderfully psychedelic, progressive album. Tracks veer from Pretty Things influenced 60s pop, to all out progressive tinged epics, often within the same song!
The album’s opening piece, I Can Teach You How To Lose A Fight, sets the scene for the whole album, with shifting time signatures aplenty and a neat segue into the album’s shortest track, The Orphanage, which thunders along driven by some great new wave guitar.
Don’t Land on Me is a wonderfully progressive piece, with a feel of King Crimson in some of the instrumentation. The switching of lead vocals between Kavus Torabi and Melanie Woods works really well, especially on this track.
This Empty Room Once Was Alive is the most disturbing track on the album. Simple instrumentation underpins a song that at first listen seems to be a song about being haunted, but soon reveals itself to be about the deep pain of loss and the loneliness that follows bereavement.
“And all I am is frightened, I’ll forget just what we had”
Another track to be filed under disturbing is The Skulls We Buried Have Regrown Their Eyes. Shifting rhythms, spidery rhodes and an imaginative use of brass provide the backdrop to a gothic horror story. A track that works really well with the lights turned off.
Destroy The World We Love reminds me a little of the mood of Mansun‘s Six album. An infectious guitar riff underpins the song, indeed the second half of this track is one of the highlights of the whole album.
“You hold a secret in your hands”
Album closer I’m Hiding Behind My Eyes is my favourite track on the album, and is sequenced well, as the most traditional sounding track on the album. The song benefits from an even pace, only going off piste for a brief period in the tracks mid-section, as it builds to a perfect album finale. I love the interplay between piano and guitar in the first section of I’m Hiding Behind My Eyes.
“In this cold galaxy, you and me,
Could form another world now.”
On first listen, you might be put off by the complexity of The Unravelling, but stick with it and you will be rewarded with a rich album filled with moving, haunting, imaginative stories set to powerful music that dips in and out of the decades for it’s inspiration.
Mr Kinski's Music Shack 
Leave a Reply