KAIHO

A new band tends to be more about the destination, that of coming together to do the improbable, even just once. When a group has been around long enough, the listener can come to look upon their history as more of a journey, with detours and returns to the original course, which of course cannot be known until the very end. It is so with sometime doom metal, sometime post rock, sometime neo folk artists KAUAN led, with apparent benevolence, by Anton Belov, who writes, sings and plays most of the instruments but grasps the wants and needs of bandmates instinctively. In no other way can one explain the marvel that is "Kaiho".

With almost all traces of metal swept under the bed at least for now, this poignant tale of the transition from innocent and jubilant childhood to subjugated adulthood is conveyed by luxurious melodies that may be bittersweet but are rarely bitter. Belov has never sung better and, apart from the opening, transitional, and closing shorter tracks, which serve more as mood setters, intermission entertainment and epilogue respectively, this is KAUAN at their most luminous. The blend of the usual pianos, ethereal keys and programmed perfection, all manner of guitars, and a sprinkling of backing vocals by long time member Alina Belova sounds great on first listen but embeds itself on the 6th or thereabouts.

I guess I need to move on now, as my voyage and theirs resumes, but nostalgia being what it is, "Kaiho" likely looks different now than it did in 2017, because life is about more than just one discrete transition.