What defines an ‘escape’? Is it shoving responsibilities aside for frivolity? Is it a meditative state? Is it self-reflection or a look back on better times? Is it subliminal, embedded in the senses? What if it’s all of those things…? That’s the premise of Phantogram‘s fifth album — using color and sound to chase down little moments in time.
Maybe the best healing comes from taking memory inventory.
Out via Neon Gold Records, Phantogram’s Memory Of A Day spans the full scope of human emotion — highlighting hope, despair, anger, confusion. It traverses the line between reality and disillusionment. It brings to the forefront how, no matter how we process the past, history remains the same. Phantogram comments: “We put these songs together as a capsule, thinking about how a certain sound or melody can bring you back instantly to a memory of a day.”
Sounds, sights — even colors. Hence the track “Running Through Colors” and the current name of the band’s tour. Memories shift like colors in a kaleidoscope, always spinning into view when you least expect it. For instance, the album begins with “Jealousy” (aka, seeing red). Searing and seething, lead singer Sarah Barthel spouts a steady stream of envious sentiments even though she knows it’s a dog-eat-dog world. Whether you cope by pounding “on the steering wheel” or screaming “it should be me”, this cruel, cruel world isn’t fair.
Next up is “It Wasn’t Meant To Be”, bringing another prime color to light.
Barthel starts with cutting lyrics like: “Your eyes all crystallized and welling in the dark // Call me a shooting star and hold my bloody heart.” This relationship fraught with friction is “like Sid and Nancy”, ending with someone black and blue.
Track three shifts to a solid blue in “All A Mystery”, with Barthel wondering “what did I do to deserve this pain?” It’s a track reminiscent of 60s soul groups in structure (think: Etta James “I’d Rather Go Blind”), only painted with a modern twist. The two songs might have been written some 55 years apart, but the subject matter remains the same — loneliness is the darkest color of them all.
And in the dark is where you find “Feedback Invisible”.
Featuring the shouts of Josh Carter, the song asks that — without direction, without connection — is anything “even real”? Are we all just caught in an invisible feedback loop that distorts our sense of self, time, and space? Very upbeat, very Matrix… let the mind-melting ensue.
The rest of the album touches on gray areas, like self-medicating in “Attaway”, as well as the rest of the color spectrum — like the bright, go-getter gold in “Come Alive”. In essence, whatever your mood, whatever your vibe, Memory Of A Day captures it tenfold and in technicolor.
The album, released back in October, is available on all digital outlets, as well as physically on traditional black and limited edition orange-and-red vinyl pressings. For more information or to hear the album for yourself, visit the links below or the band’s album fanlink.
Phantogram – “Attaway” official visualizer
Track listing:
- Jealousy
- It Wasn’t Meant To Be
- All A Mystery
- Feedback Invisible
- Attaway
- Running Through Colors
- I Wanna Know
- Ashes
- Come Alive
- Move In Silence
- Happy Again
- Memory Of A Day
Stream ‘Memory Of A Day’ album:
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Disclaimer: All views presented in this album review are those of the reviewer and not necessarily those of Top Shelf Music.
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