Rating: 4/5
Verdict: Rock anthems that fly you to the top of the world
If you haven't heard of Danish band The Kissaway Trail, slip them somewhere between other roaring, soaring indie acts from places at the top of the globe. This is their second release under their current arrangement (from 2004-2006 they were known as the three-piece experiment Isles).
Now they are a
five-piece, are touring with the likes of The Editors and The Temper Trap, handed production of this album over to Peter Jatis, (behind The National and Interpol) and had it mastered by Mandy Parnell who has worked with Sigur Ros and Depeche Mode.
They open with a stirring six-minute clamouring combination of pianos and bells interspersed with meandering pockets of near-silence. Rumbling drums and wailing strings carry the following melancholy track to the same emotional heights, and after an orchestral, choir-boy opening on the third track, New Year, is thrown into a grandiose anthem. The desperation in the repeated chorus of Beat Your Heartbeat is just as powerful, meanwhile whispery Philadelphia trickles rather than soars. Most of the 11 tracks on this album could run as the score to the most climactic point of films - especially during poignant slow-mos or fuzzy flashbacks.
With heavy themes of love and loss, vocalists Soren Corneliussen and Thomas Fagerlund's slightly strange diction and delicate smatterings of mandolin and chimes, its obviously from somewhere quite mysterious and far away - and possibly written on low levels of Vitamin D, which actually makes it rather ideal for this time of year.
