1. The Sea Cares for Its Own
2. December Lights
3. Longest Day
4. Horses
5. Where Other Ghosts Gather
6. Bows and Blades
7. Shel Silverstein
8. And I Hear Music
9. Coventry
10. Apocalyptic Love Song
‘The Sea Cares for Its Own’ narrates a love story between romance and nature. In ‘Horses’, Jeff and Leora Caylor sing ‘The sky is wintergreen my love // As moths migrate again my love’. Musically and lyrically, The Weathering looks towards the earth’s natural landscape to express musical concepts while using instruments and effects to paint a panorama of rolling hills and lush greenery. Their entwining voices present a tender innocent with a hint of ethereal experience, and their instrumentation is often cinematic. This is also one of the mere two times I’ve been more turned *on* by the genre of pop/dream pop, than turned off by it. The reason that I’m more attracted to The Weathering is because of the use of synthpop elements and how everything is vibrant, surreal, mellow, soothing and creatively energetic at the same time, unlike what the genre of ‘pop’ conventionally alludes to.
My laptop was out of battery when I received my copy of the CD, so I took a sneak peak at the lyric booklet. The way their words and phrases were structured and how they read, reminded me of Frost poems – talking about trees and forests in detailed nature with a powerful underlying message. Comprehensively I appreciated how although the album is quite insistent and collective on concept – the duo didn’t once fail to show a strong range of variety through innovation – ranging from slower, softer songs, to dance-like, upbeat pop. I can’t say I was fond of most of the album, however, many of the songs were buried in endless layers of often unnecessary extraneous effects, perhaps in the hopes of compensating and contrasting against the softer vocals and often cliché melodies.
I particularly relished in ‘Horses’, I liked how it was in this song that they made great use of their interdependent vocals and harmonies along with a balance of artificial effects and real instruments. It wasn’t a difficult-to-listen-to, overwhelming clump of sharp synths and noise like in track one.
In just under fifty minutes, with the help of liminal sonics, we emerge from the sea, take a spin around evergreen trees and peek through cottage windows, but we eventually end up strolling back to meet The Weathering at the waters.
– Chloe Cheng
