I think my biggest draw to music is the emotion it pulls from me when listening to a great song. That feeling where you experience the song with the entirety of your being. Everything fades away and all that matters in that moment is the space between notes, ears, and heart. Copeland’s upcoming album, Ixora, embodies everything I search for in music.
I’m sitting here on a cold November watching workers hang Christmas lights upon the trees outside my window. I squint to make the lights double and blur. It’s here, where it’s inevitable the music will take me over. It’s here, where I fall in love with Copeland all over again. There’s just something about the soft vibrato, the restraint, the way the band lets the songs breath. It’s here, with my fingers alternating between keyboard and cold glass, that I appreciate the subtleness and beauty of this album.
What more can you ask from an artist besides that they put themselves into their craft? Is there anything more potent than finding yourself swallowing back each word? I can’t think of many albums I’ve heard this year that have wrapped themselves around me the way this one has. Maybe it’s the weather and the way I lose feeling in my fingertips after reaching for the cold beer next to me. But each sip brings with it another wave of warmth. And as the music pulls back and Aaron Marsh’s haunting vocals phase, I am engulfed in fall. The music becomes the soundtrack to the swaying lights and falling leaves.
I would describe this album as soft confidence. Each song trusted to find its mark not with abundance and flash but with grace and an overarching sense of purpose. Each decision crafted and applied with the confidence of a master sculptor. Each note a perfect chisel strike, each melody a controlled stroke, each drum placed with pixel perfect precision.
There will be those that call an album like this “boring.” That descriptor being thrown at music that swirls instead of pounds has never meant much to me. I understand being drawn to something else, but I will never understand being bored by an album as emotionally exhausting as this. Copeland have a discography that is rightly praised, but pressed, I’d say this album transcends their previous work.