While the pun is there for the taking, it really is a break from the day job for Jason Reece of …Trail Of Dead.
Taking their cues from 70s psych and krautrock, their tunes fall predominantly in the camp of the former, all glittering phased guitars and spectral vocals. Opener Golden Age offers the merest hint of the Dead’s more indie‑rock efforts on Worlds Apart, while tracks like Am I A Nomad? take a different tack, having more in common with French psych-prog revivalists Yeti Lane. The groove and momentum that this implies is felt throughout, and while Trail Of Dead have toyed with similar stylings before – on Fairlight Pendant from Tao Of The Dead, for example – this is a more cerebral effort than a noisy pastiche of genre norms. Album centrepiece Everywhere Is NowHere is reminiscent of Secret Machines’ seminal debut Now Here Is Nowhere, no less (that name’s no accident). For, like the latter album (and though they may bear a passing resemblance to Tame Impala at times), Departures is the sound of a band axiomatically divided; both paying loving homage to the past, and throwing in the experimentation befitting this new century. AL ** **