“Check out this old cassette I found washed up at Baker Beach.”
Wait, what? As someone who has encountered worthwhile cassettes lying around strange places (I’m looking at you, Clifford Spleenhurfer’s Puzzle Pieces, which I once found at the local laundromat), this San Jose group’s suggestion that they randomly found a full-length album washed up on the beach immediately piqued my interest.
As it turns out, it’s a promotional line to introduce us to Salt Veridian, the new album by self-described “therapy rock” band Comfort Fashion. At times big and atmospheric (as on the opener “Banshee”), elsewhere longing and intimate as bedroom pop (e.g. “Heave”), the songs here strike at the same raw emotional indie folk rock we enjoyed in the band’s last full-length album, Cleave. The quietly grief-aware vocals, the hazy marching funk of the drums, and the layers of electronics and strings add up to a pleasantly off-kilter sound reminiscent of Icelandic groups like Sigur Rós or múm. From the poetic flourish of the promotional note to the poem published on the Bandcamp page to the very poetry of the music, it’s indeed a rocking kind of therapy.
