There is hope. No matter where you are, and no matter what is happening to you. Or at least that is what we are understanding, and feeling, from hearing A Single Flower, the latest album from Australian instrumental band We Lost The Sea.
We Lost The Sea are a cinematic post-rock band from Sydney, formed in 2007. Their music has always lived somewhere between weight and beauty, with crushing guitars and long atmospheric builds.
But this is also a band with a heavy history. In 2013, their vocalist and close friend Chris Torpy passed away at only 24. After that, We Lost The Sea carried on as an instrumental band, and in 2015 released Departure Songs, a record shaped by grief, sacrifice and impossible human journeys. It became the way we discovered them at Above The Crowds, and we’ve been following them since.
A Single Flower arrives after five years in the works, and it feels like a band still trying to find light without pretending the dark isn’t there.
Maybe it’s in post-rock’s nature to build huge atmospheres and almost movie-like scenarios before delivering a torrent of guitars and emotion. But here, the emotions cut through.
The album starts with “If They Had Hearts”, all dark chords and tension, slowly opening the door into something vast, uneasy and almost ceremonial.
Then “A Dance with Death” puts us standing at the edge of the precipice, looking down at the abyss, and suddenly makes us run away from it and save ourselves. Yeah, intense. We know.
Then comes “Everything Here Is Black and Blinding”, and wait, didn’t we say this album was about hope? What are those song titles?
That’s kind of the point. A Single Flower treats hope as something that has to survive the storm first.
“Bloom (Murmurations at First Light)” is the moment when the band finally lets you see a port after the tempest. And then, after the brief passage of “The Gloaming”, the album lands on “Blood Will Have Blood”, a 27-minute final voyage through tension, release, collapse and return. It is huge, demanding and probably not the song you put on while answering emails. Unless you want your emails to start questioning their own existence.
But that is also why the record works.
A Single Flower asks for your time, for you to sit with it. And if you’re new to this style of music, give it a chance. Somewhere between the dark titles, and the massive guitars build-ups, you’ll understand what we mean.
There is hope here, and it comes with distorted guitars.
Listen where you listen:
