I really appreciate well designed post-rock, where art, name, and music conspire to set you into a certain type of mood. Naturally, that mood will often be melancholia, as the genre’s proclivity for the more somber range of the emotional palette often shines through. It Was a Good Dream, a duo working out of Boston, dive right into those darker shades without a second though, crafting melancholy as if it were clay on their latest track. “You Left a Letter and a Song”, from name to trippy video, through electronic percussion, hazy samples, and modified saxophone, is pure despondence and hefty mood weaved into just over five minutes of touching post-rock. Head on down below to stream it!
I think the attribute that most grabbed me about this track when I first heard it is how everything slowly coalesces into the last segments. Moving through the initial phases of the track, the drums adorn that electronic sheen pretty early on. Their faster groove then becomes the hinge upon which the saxophone enters, the drums becoming a backdrop for its moving intimations. Ideas from the movements then seep into the restrained crescendo which first announces the end of the track, before the guitars make a triumphant, howling, wounded return for the crescendo-proper. Everything is channeled into those last moments, gathering up the rest of the energies from the track and letting them resolve before static announces the cathartic end.
“You Left a Letter and a Song” comes to us from Help Me to Recollect, the band’s upcoming album due to release on May 24th via the excellent Dunk! Records. You can head on over here to pre-order it and there’s also some cool merch over at the band’s Bandcamp page.