EFFLORESCE

This is an essential album! Oceansize have managed to blend Space/Experimental atmosphere with occasional hard rock and post rock influences, to create a very original and intruiging sound. "Effloresce" is a work of beauty and pure creativity. This album sounds like an epic journey of different moods, without any breaks inbetween each song.

This album is opened up with the spacey, "I am the Morning", which is one of my most loved Oceansize tracks. It starts off very softly and keeps on building into a tremendous burst of uplifting rock music, gently climaxing into "Catalyst", the song that made me want to get this album. "Catalyst" is a very hard track with plenty of cool riffs and strong vocals that have a post-grunge feel to them as they often change between soft and uplifting sounds to powerful agressive vocals. All of this is in an impressive display of musicianship that keeps the listener intruiged for the full 6 minutes and 40 seconds as the song continuosly shifts through different moods.

"One Day All This Could Be Yours", is a much softer track, that has a very spacey and experimental feel to it, this track is genius as the lyrics are pretty minimalist but they are sung in different ways to show off some impressive vocal range, if "Catalyst" didn't already. This song is pretty trippy and stands out as being one of the most unique pieces on the album. This builds into "Massive Bereavement", definetly a massive track that has a noteable builds as the first half is quite gentle and spacey, which then finds its way into some excellent angst, full of thundering guitar riffs and menacing vocals. One of the proggiest tracks on the album.

"Rinsed" and "Unravel" are undoubtebly filler tracks which only use is to link the album together and show off some experimental and spacey sounds. These tracks can drag on far too long and take up too much time on the album. "Amputee" shows off a wide away of uplifting and chilled out sounds set in quite a heavy textured song. This follows the uplifting change of mood that was kicked off with "I am the Morning". "Amputee" is definetly one of the albums best tracks and a must hear.

The last three tracks are very long and tend to sum up the previous areas of the album well, though in a softer form. These tracks have many downer qualities which is good as it gives balance to the album, since many of the first tracks are positive and uplifting. "Long Forgotten" is full of emotion. The last three tracks are a great conclusion to a great album and show off some passionate and emotional vocals that have a depressing Radiohead-esque feel to them.

Oceansize definetly have potential to become a much more well known and loved band if their next album is as good as this one. I will definetly be looking forward to future releases and this is definetly a band that I recommend others to try out. "Effloresce" is just short of a masterpiece, the only real let down as that tracks like "Unravel" and "Rinsed" are clear fillers, but this album is an essential piece of music. Get it now!