All Is Lost, the latest from Chicago’s Dead Feathers, arrives 23 August 2019 via Ripple Music. The eight-song sonic journey provides, according to guitarist Tony Wold, a long view of the group.
“All Is Lost is an album that wasn’t written in one individual time or year,” Wold notes. “It wasn’t written in one season. It has songs written from the time of our EP up until we recorded at Treehouse Records in Chicago. In that time, we have grown musically and grown as people while shifting and gaining influences and experiences. I think you can hear this in the songs.”
The guitarist continues, “We’ve taken a lot of time to create this album. We have overcome many obstacles in our way to get where we are now, and we feel it bleeds into the songs and songwriting of this album. The title All Is Lost is a message that we can all relate to at the moment. A sense of impending doom, riding into a storm knowing there’s a slim to none chance of us making it through. It could be the loss of one’s self, the loss of a relationship. It’s the threat of climate change, and the hot button issues happening in our country and around the world. We’ve all thought to ourselves at one point in time, for some reason or another, all is lost.”
Hypnotic and psychedelic sounds take center stage here with the drone-laden meditation, “With Me” and “Horse and Sands”, which sounds, alternately, like an ode to a missing lover and a declaration of manifest destiny. (Think: A Western, not space, minded rendition of Black Sabbath’s “Planet Caravan” but moving at a gallop rather than a lava-esque saunter.) The titular piece, meanwhile, is a hazy, perhaps seductive wallop that demonstrates the full power of the Wold/Tim Snyder guitar attack.
“Darling Sights” imagines a collision between the aforementioned Sabbath and Liege & Lief-era Fairport Convention, especially via Marissa Allen’s ethereal, eternally charming voice. The rhythm section of Rob Rodak (bass) and Joel Castanon (drums) stands as a firm bedrock for this collective, helping to create a buzzing, burning, collection that demands repeated listens.
