TYPHOON - Offering

Ambitious and at times pretentious, the fourth album from the Oregon band is a complex, difficult, even painful project. This isn't about revolutions, youthful urges, love and hate, but about one of the most insidious afflictions of our time: depression, the loss of memory, that pain that takes hold of the human soul when it perceives the impossibility of putting its memories and attachments in order; this is the story told by "Offering". It's a narrative rich in nuance, the one that Kyle Morton and the sprawling cast of Typhoon offer up in this intriguing sonic feature film. There are plenty of words, at times cruel, an invitation to awaken the conscience, an exhortation to reflect on what we have and what could slip away from us: namely, awareness of our thoughts, of our choices.

In its arduous depiction of the protagonist's mental deterioration, split into four chapters ("Floodplains," "Flood," "Reckoning" and "Afterparty"), the American band steeps its variegated indie-rock in a sort of sonic oblivion; words and music reach the ear like an echo, like a desperate attempt at communication. Musically, "Offering" stays in the vicinity of that Arcade Fire-style folk-rock that influenced an entire generation of indie bands; even the multifaceted lineup (ranging from eight to eleven members) resembles that of the famous Canadian outfit. Typhoon, however, haven't changed course yet — if anything, rather than veering toward pop, they seem intent on feeding their chamber-music leanings as well as the literary tenor of their lyrical outpourings.

With such an abundance of elements, it would have been easy to lose the narrative thread, but the music remains consistently vibrant and full of ideas; each track unfolds through relentless, adjoining harmonic and stylistic shifts, and the resulting disorientation is symbolic, dramatic, yet emotionally coherent and compelling. It's hard to separate any of the fourteen tracks from their narrative function within the album — the lyrical body of "Offering" is osmotic, interchangeable, and for that reason hard to grasp through simple analytical description. The abundance of instruments and harmonies sometimes puts the album's listenability to the test, but the expressive stillness of "Wake", the Patrick Watson-esque dramatic sweep of "Unusual", the desperate yet measured and melancholy plea of "Darker", and the exhausting deadline of closer "Sleep" are all nonetheless instrumental to the literary and cinematic portrayal of the suffering that follows the loss of memory — or, symbolically, of faith in the future.

Some tracks still retain a measure of independence: the energetic "Rorschach", the mournful "Algeron" and the delicate "Chiaroscuro" have a more linear lyrical structure, while still serving the narrative of "Offering". There's no doubt that Typhoon's music isn't exactly a model of originality, and many won't struggle to spot, across the fourteen tracks, a wealth of echoes (from Low to The National, from Bright Eyes to Bon Iver, from Mumford & Sons to Coldplay, from Fleet Foxes to Sufjan Stevens). Even so, no list of implied influences manages to dent the success of the project. Whether it's thanks to the narrative premise or the perfect balance between words and music, "Offering" earns itself a place of real distinction, even winning forgiveness for the less-than-excellent vocal qualities of the band's leader, Kyle Morton, who nonetheless deserves credit for an intellectual honesty and emotional sincerity that, in this case at least, make all the difference.

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09/03/2018