An intense and pointed debut from Shearling, a project by Alex Kent and Sylvie Simmons following the dissolution of the band Sprain. There’s a lot of depth to this work and the radical sincerity that clearly went into this album is something the world needs more of.

Sonically it’s deeply experimental and covers the well tread ground of post rock and noise rock in interesting ways, with elements of folk and modern classical composition. All this is assembled together into one giant work as masterfully as any of the greatest psych rock studio session conglomerations.

The songwriting (and delivery of the lyrics) is  more raw and immediate than Alex’s previous work while possessing a greater level of intention. There’s less of a stream-of-consciousness feeling than Sprain. Whether this music was written more or less spontaneously than his older songs, I feel like you can hear that the feelings and themes present have been even more deeply held and more carefully extracted. No doubt this is the result of some deeply personal processing but that intimacy has naturally resulted in something universal. I think it takes a truly great artist to do that.