Q) What do you get if you cross a shooting star, a fire on a hill, and an old satellite dish in someone’s garden? A) Material for New Mexico duo Tan Cologne’s third album. Just reading about such lovely, twee inspirations is a welcome head holiday from shooting missiles, fires in cities, and all manner of broken kit and bones strewn across multiple plots and districts. Music, what is it good for? Absolutely everything.
Unknown Beyond was recorded at the home of Lauren Green and Marissa Macias, and one can’t help but feel jealous of their privilege, as opening track ‘Cool Star’ reveals that they live in a cathedral. Such a spacious, woozy tribute to an incandescent faraway place is just the tonic for harried homosapiens. ‘You Are The Dreamer’ is an instrumental that sounds like a band in The Shining ballroom warming up, or slowing down so as not to fray Jack Nicholson’s nerves any further. The track’s title is taken from a sticker on the window of a car that belonged to a friend of the band who sadly passed away recently. The car was sold and “unknowingly used as the getaway car during an arson event of our local ice-skating rink in Taos.” That’s a whole album’s worth of inspiration right there.
The agitated drums that kick off ‘Cloud of Mirrors’ are pure Joy Division, and the next almost five minutes are a deep dive into a Cocteau Twins wonderland. Rather appropriately, ‘Infinity’ is a continuation of sorts, though more brooding, with its interlocking Massive Attack-like descending riffs.
I can never listen to ‘Angels’ without remembering Charlie Brooker saying that it’s a popular choice for ‘thick people’s weddings’. There seems little chance that any besotted couple, intelligent or otherwise, would choose Tan Cologne’s ‘Angels’ as an aural accompaniment to their special day, not least because it’s inspired by a burning Los Angeles. However, if the Godspeed You! Black Emperor-like sound of shuffling through an ash-covered landscape reminds you of love, have a word with your partner and the DJ.
‘Eyelids’ is “a song about human embodiment as a cosmic cycle.” You could spend time wondering what that means or instead listen to the song, which has an urgency and a hint of a chorus that make it an out-and-out banger in comparison with the preceding songs on the album. ‘Open to Communication’ is, somewhat ironically, open to interpretation, as the lyrics are indiscernible. However, as with much of Unknown Beyond, you’ll be too grateful for its gorgeousness to care. On ‘Spiral Path’, we’re gently led down a meandering path to a spiralling garden of sound. Album closer ‘In Resin’ is The Shining band with Liz Fraser on vocals, and they sound like they’re fantastically relieved (perhaps even joyous) now that Nicholson has been escorted from the premises. Ghostly guests sway approvingly. Some toe-tapping occurs.
Tan Cologne are softgaze with a cold wave aesthetic. They are alert to the beautiful mystery of the mundane and the celestial. They are a balm for the brain, which is to say they are like a dream.
Unknown Beyond is out now via Labrador Records
Tan Cologne: Instagram | Bandcamp
Review by Neil Laurenson
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