Review Summary: “I hope you’re eternal, but all I have is hope.”
Death. It’s a terrifying concept, and it’s something that, at one point or another, we’re all going to face on our journeys through life. Death is the great unknown, it’s the turning point of our existences and it’s a delve into the dark abyss.
Divisi, A Lot Like Birds’ fourth studio album and first without former vocalist Kurt Travis, uses the concept of death as the cornerstone of its message. In fact, the album’s entire atmosphere permeates of death.
Divisi is an album that makes the listener feel as though they’re wandering through the dark, into something unknown. In some moments its messages and sounds are poignant and haunting, but at others it’s not very clear where they’re headed. That’s an apt way to describe
Divisi as a whole--Aimless but powerful.
About halfway through
Divisi, we get the impression that we’re listening to something more than just a collection of songs. The seamless transitions in sound and message between songs like “The Smoother the Stone” and “ Infinite Chances” or “Good Soil, Bad Seeds” and “From Moon to Son” lead us to feel that A Lot Like Birds are trying to bring us on a journey in
Divisi, but by the time we comprehend this, the album is over.
This is in part due to the new sonic direction of the record. Throughout a majority of this album, A Lot Like Birds’ softer, more melodic new approach to sound does little to capture the attention of the listener, often forcing it’s lyrics to be the relying factor of interest. This is especially apparent in the album’s slow-burning tracks like “For Shelley” and “Trace The Lines.” On top of this, the shifts between songs can often be a bit too subtle. While the subtlety makes the album feel cohesive, it causes its sound to drag on for too long.
It isn’t until we get to the later half of the album where we’re given a more aggressive shift in tone--and some key identifying instrumental devices--that the album seems to regain that interest. With the
Friends theme inspired hook of “Infinite Chances,” the horns on “No Attention for Solved Puzzles,” the simulated choir on “Further Below,” or the screams on “From Moon to Son” we begin to see each song develop it’s own unique identity separate from the record. This comes in far too late though, and results in an album that feels like it was never fully fleshed out from front to back.
At times, the narrative journey of Divisi seems as misguided and aimless as the band's new musical direction. While some songs capture the fragility of mortality and dealing with the concept of death, like extremely personal eulogies “For Shelley” and “Atoms in Evening,” or the heart-tugging closers “From Moon to Son” and “Divisi,” other tracks are more amorphous and decide to tackle other topics like relationships and the fear of being alone, like “The Sound of Us,” “Trace the Lines,” and “Infinite Chances.” Conceptually, these songs are often detours from the immersive poeticism that this album presents as its foundation and that only seems to hinder the otherwise focused vision in this album.
The constant dichotomy and harmonizing between vocalists Cory Lockwood and Matt Coate is often refreshing, and at times their vocal trading can be eerily subtle. Perhaps it’s because the texture of their voices are often buried under the mix of instruments, but these two seem to just flow together as one unit constantly, aside from songs where the presence of one is far more obvious than the other. Like on the Cory centric song “For Shelley” and Matt’s dominant appearance on “Infinite Chances.”
In total,
Divisi is a record that feels like a small step before a leap. A Lot Like birds attempted to venture into new, unknown territory with this album and came out with a product that doesn’t show the band's full talent or potential. Their new direction is bold, but ultimately lacking. Perhaps in the future they’ll continue this new journey and come out with a more polished effort.
