OCTOBER

BREATHING (2017)

Electric Youth

So the selling point of this record is that the band was working in tandem with the director and producers and such, and through creative differences, the full vision never got a chance to actualize, right? Now, despite research, there really isn’t much out there to prove this story, and while I don’t think that it really needs this story, I’m obsessed with what it represents. Everybody who listens through this record will come up with their own version of what the film was supposed to be, but thematically are likely to align, ie Loss of innocence, coming of age, the fear of the unknown during developmentally important times. It’s stunning, moody, nostalgic, and incredibly… sad. It’s all that remains from something that will never exist. Don’t we all carry that little something? Artifacts or remains from a time or place where it once was allowed to exist? Anyways, Still My Love is an 80s ballad hit from another universe, both versions of This Was Our House are hauntingly beautiful and baroque, and Loni’s Goodbye makes me miss what’s gone twice as much. It’s all so uncanny but familiar, a stroll through suburbia, retracing your adolescent steps on fall-covered sidewalks, feeling the same breeze that carried you to sacred places. If you and those you shared them with aren’t there to occupy them, what’s haunting those spaces now?