CROWS FLY BY

"Crows Fly By" is unmistakably Echolyn. Coursing through an eerily smooth series of time signature shifts, Ray Weston's velvet voice guides the listener through a song about superstition. Brett Kull provided a lengthy explanation of the inspiration for this track, namely a client of his who knew how to read the signs of the universe and govern his life accordingly- the inconveniences and aggravations he caused to others never factoring into the equation. "Crows Fly By" would have not been an unwelcome inclusion on Echolyn's second eponymous album, laden with various textures of guitar and piano, all pushing through the piece in a calm urgency. The final few minutes of the piece are a distant and discordant haze, an improvised section that exists as an aural mist, the cloud that sheathes the judgment of the ever-superstitious.

"All before her eyes - wrecked in meaning."

This dark standalone track from Echolyn has a bit of a slouch to it. As the lyrics talk about the behavioral tendency towards fabricating meaning in the largest and smallest of life's occurrences, I find myself trying to weasel around the fact that I'm not blown away by what I'm hearing.

After a very strong self-titled release in 2012, my expectations were high for this track. After several listens I find that, while suiting the narrative, the music falls a bit short. The track is essentially split in two. The first half being the structured song and the second half being a long, fading outro jam that eventually finds itself in the realm of the downright creepy - perhaps giving the lyrics more of an identity than warranted.

The mix is definitely on par with the group standard. You know you're listening to Echolyn mere seconds into the track. This is a good release that I believe would fare better in the context of an album as it tries a little too hard to get its point across - in the end finding itself "wrecked in meaning".