“10 Years Of Travel” is the latest release by Soft Cotton County, a band led by an English songwriter and musician Andy Coombs with the immense help of current collaborators Shira and Sascha. Consisting of ten excellent compositions, it’s their first piece of work after 14 years, showcasing their tremendous experience, knowledge, creativity, talent, and skills. Lyrically, “10 Years Of Travel” explores themes of love, hope, various sentiments, moods, and situations, so it’s a highly relatable material that will unquestionably resonate with the broader auditorium. Soundwise, Soft Cotton County combines many different but complementary music genres to illustrate such rich and luxurious sonic imagery. Perhaps dream pop comes to mind first, but don’t be surprised if you stumble upon some of the finest properties borrowed from shoegaze, indie pop, indie rock, soft rock, and many more. They use all these additional elements as more than necessary enhancements, accentuations, decorations, and other details to elevate their music to new heights while simultaneously remaining loyal to the primary sonic direction. Therefore, these experimentations with many different but complementary music styles will appeal not only to dream pop and shoegaze fans but also to those picky music enthusiasts looking for cleverly assembled and flawlessly performed music.
As soon as you press play, you’ll notice that Soft Cotton Candy are not joking around with their music. Each composition is a profoundly emotive sonic outburst, arriving with perfect structure, and adorned with many intricate segments, brilliant ideas, and outstanding orchestrations. They poured heart and soul into this comprehensive collection, proving that they’re solely dedicated to the craft. They even thought about the tiniest details and nuances while working on these songs, so each vocal maneuver, strum over the strings, marvelous synth maneuver, or drum beat has its place and purpose in this sonic equation. It’s nearly mindblowing how calm, soothing, relaxing, and ethereal these songs are yet they’re fully packed with raw emotion, tension, and power that will immediately grab you by the collar and refuse to let go long after this full-length album ends. From the onset, you’ll notice how Shira’s incredible vocal performance commands attention and guides the listening apparatus. She takes you on a fascinating journey through the expansive sonic universe, built upon some of the finest instrumentations you’ll hear in a while. The impressive vocal range seamlessly balances low, mid, and high notes from scratch to finish with precision and finesse, emphasizing all those carefully prepared segments and orchestrations. Her vocal performance is passionate, sincere, confident, emotional, and powerful, decorating everything Andy intended to achieve with this magnificent album. The vocal layers contribute more emotional depth and uplift everything to an entirely new level without sounding too overwhelming. Quite the contrary, these vocal harmonies suit the instrumentations, creating a well-balanced harmony worth revisiting over and over again.
An entire amalgam of calm, soothing, relaxing, catchy, memorable, engaging chord progressions, harmonies, and melodies delivered on acoustic and electric guitars lurks around, contributing to the otherworldly ambiance while the generous servings of reverb, echo, and delay effects create recognizable dreamy and psychedelic vibes. All these impressive guitar works are carefully crafted to suit Shira’s incredible vocal performance. Together with many beautiful leads, themes, chord progressions, and ambiances delivered on synths, they create a perfect backdrop for all those vocals to shine upon. Their dedication to the craft especially shines here, as their performance is soulful, passionate, and honest to the max, further elevating lyrical content. Of course, this material wouldn’t sound this good without the equally impressive rhythm section. You’ll notice how all those subtle yet vividly hearable basslines provide more heaviness, depth, and clarity while binding all those synth and guitar works with rhythmic patterns. These low-ends may be subtle but they’re rich, dense, and heavy, contributing more power to these songs. In the meantime, the exceptional drumming performance built upon tastefully assembled, flawlessly performed, well-accentuated, moderate beats, breaks, fills, and other percussive acrobatics keep the remainder of the orchestrations in line while dictating the groove and tempo. These drumming sequences give more than necessary punch to these songs, but sometimes they’re so subtle, working to the calm properties of these songs. It all depends on mood and situation, and this is another proof that Soft Cotton Candy paid a lot of attention while assembling these marvelous songs. As I said before, each instrument has its place and purpose, so if the guitar and synths act as a backdrop for all those vocal harmonies to shine upon, then the bass and drums serve as a backbone, holding everything together.
“It Could Happen To You,” “The Future Is Not What It Used To Be,” “Coward Of The Country Fair,” “Blue On Blue,” “Engine Summer,” “Cosy Little Life,” and “This Flight” are undoubtedly standout tracks, but you should also pay attention to the remainder of the album because the entire album sound beautiful, meaningful, and powerful from scratch to finish. Andy, Shira, and Sascha invested heart and soul into “10 Years Of Travel,” and their effort resulted in material worth the wait and spinning over and over again. If you’re looking for calm, soothing, relaxing, ethereal, emotive, meaningful compositions full of impressive vocal harmonies, mesmerizing synth and guitar interplays, intricate basslines, and moderate rhythmic patterns, you should check out “10 Years Of Travel” immediately. Head to 5000 Records for more information about ordering this dream pop gem on vinyl.
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