Colorfeels

“Syzygy” is a wholly unassuming album, composed by five local musicians with a gifted knack for melodious progressions and contemplative performances. Co-frontmen Parker Cason and Justin Maurer, alongside bassist Taylor Zachary, drummer Matt Scibilia, and multi-instrumentalist Jared Ziemba, conjure something beyond “genre,” drawing contrasting timbres from across the musical spectrum to paint a broader picture that all blends together effortlessly and comfortably. It’s production is sparse yet airtight, and sounds like the result of a diligent pursuit for perfection. With over an hour of music, Colorfeels’ debut ranks highly among the most cohesive releases this year.
The album doesn’t start so much as it wakes up. Dry, crisp chords layered with colorful flute trills provide an excellent tonal bed for the simple and enticing vocal structures of the album’s opening tracks. Soft vocals invite you to listen closely, and before there’s even a steady drum beat the listener will find themselves hooked. After warm tracks like “Pretty Walk,” the band shifts from subtle ambiance to more focused song structures. “Unplanned Holiday,” the first song to break the threshold, features intense slap-back echo and heavier, more deliberate drums; production techniques that are reminiscent of – and are a great homage to – Simon & Garfunkle tunes like Cecilia or even Paul Simon’s The Rhythm and The Saints record. In fact, the drums are the most deliberate instrument on the album, often changing from four-on-the-floor drives to cascading cymbal swells and flourishing syncopations. That’s not to say the rest of the instrumentation isn’t focused, but the drums and the intimate production allow the rest of the instruments to speak for themselves.
As “Syzygy” progresses, it continues to open up with different sonic textures. “Zenzizenzizenzic” serves as the album’s halfway point, and contains a very dramatic segue into the second half of the album. Warbling synths and swirling organs distort into charging guitar riffs that remain stable and omnipotent, providing the tonal foreground for the rest of the album. Though the second half shifts direction, Parker and Justin never lose creative momentum; melodies and harmonies consistently pop out and surprise the listener from beginning to end. Lyric subjects range from the interpersonal to the existential, from failed love on “Pretty Walk” to mortality on “Insufferably.” They are calmly delivered and represent a level of focus and precision common in bands like Grizzly Bear and My Morning Jacket. “Fun Machine” is like a Radiohead influenced folk tune akin to “Subterranean Homesick Alien,” with slide guitar passages (performed by My Morning Jacket’s Carl Broemel) that sound more like a UFO distress call than an instrument.
Closing with a nearly 15-minute home stretch, the final two songs feel like the final pieces of a bigger statement and bring the whole experience full circle. “Glimmer” is an amazing track, taking traditional instruments to cosmic heights. Though the final track is a seven-minute sample of an oncoming train, it’s an abstract statement to the band’s approach to instrumentation and dynamics. “Syzygy” is a marathon of ideas, but what Colorfeels does best is allign all those ideas with concise accuracy.
After a successful Kickstarter campaign, Colorfeels is celebrating the release of the album in Nashville on beautiful 180 gram vinyl at Grimey’s and The Groove for $20. If our stream of “Unplanned Holiday” above isn’t enough, be sure to head to one of those stores to pick it up. It’s well worth the cash. You can find out more information about the band at their website, where you can also score a digital copy of the album - Music City Interactive

Colorfeels‘ Syzygy is pretty much a primer of indie rock circa 2011: Grizzly Bear’s rustic qualities (“Pretty Walk,” “Be There”), Fleet Foxes’ harmonies (“Mirrored Walls”), Vampire Weekend’s triumphant afro-beat rhythms and textures (“Unplanned Holiday”), alt-country (“Fun Machine”), Bishop Allen’s quirky enthusiasm (the clarinet in “Fun Machine”), Generationals’ perky bass contributions (everywhere) and The Dirty Projectors’ free-flowing song styles (everywhere again). Thankfully, the band eschewed the currently en vogue garage rock recording style for an immaculately clear one.

It’s this pristine engineering that saves this from being a pastiche; even if you’ve heard all of these sounds before, they sound incredibly gorgeous coming from Colorfeels. The clarinet and piano on “Be There” may call up notions of everyone from Wilco to the Beatles, but the sound is so striking that you may not care (or even really notice). This is true of almost every tune — with the exception of ”Zenzizenzizenzic,” whose shameless Muse appropriation feels totally out of place. I really enjoyed Syzygy on my first listen, but several minutes later I couldn’t remember anything about it except that I wanted to hear those pretty songs again. And they are very pretty.

After a half-dozen listens with the same ending thoughts (which is saying something — this debut is an hour long), I realized that Colorfeels has no signature. This album is gorgeous and almost infinitely malleable, but there’s not a single thing that screams COLORFEELS WAS HERE!

It should be noted that there aren’t any gimmicks to make it look like the band has a stamp (see aforementioned garage rock). For this they should be lauded; they are not hiding anything. They are what they are, and they let you hear that. That is admirable.

Syzygy is a mesmerizing indie-rock album that wears a lot of masks. Whether or not this was the intent is something only the members of Colorfeels can say. But I would love to see a group of instrumentalists and songwriters this talented explore one area of songwriting more thoroughly and place their stamp on music. It’s comforting and familiar, but there’s more to music than that. - Independent Clauses

If you’d have told me a year ago, a month ago, or even last week that I’d be writing about a band with an album called “Syzygy,” I’d have laughed in your face. Many bands like to thrive off either the most obscure, cryptic names or those that are incredibly simple, and I like to stay away from those bands. Oftentimes these bands are imitations of what they expect to be “popular” music. Welcome to a music blogger’s inbox, people.

This all leads me to Colorfeels, about whom I can gladly say, I don’t care what they name their album. The music is good. It’s experimental pop, it’s got some yelps, and it sounds a little bit like other hot bands but you just can’t put your finger on who. Why? Because Colorfeels blends genres, swiftly and easily transitioning among them. - Knox Road

Amazingly, the word ‘syzygy’ has four separate meanings depending on the context – and that’s in addition to being the name of a Japanese band and an episode of The X-Files. And now, it’s also the name of Nashville quintet Colorfeels’ debut album. In the most common use, syzygy occurs when there are three celestial bodies in a straight line. For example, when there is a solar or lunar eclipse, the sun, moon and the Earth are said to be in syzygy. Or something like that. That’s what I gathered from my brief session on Wikipedia.

Really the definition of the album’s title doesn’t have much to do with the album itself, however; the PR email we received about the band compared them to the likes of Grizzly Bear, Fleet Foxes and Local Natives, but none of those contemporaries really fit Colorfeels that well. Those are large shoes to fill, and Colorfeels fills out their own just fine without the comparisons. They’re more indebted to Americana, and they feel more in line with the psych folk of Dr. Dog than anything else. Such disparate comparisons are apt, however, in that the band blends all those styles into an album that ends up being ethereal at points, grounded at others, and a wholly enjoyable experience. It all lines up perfectly in the end, and that’s really the definition of ‘syzygy.’

If you want a copy of the band’s album for your very own, you can head over to their website where you can get the whole thing for whatever price you deem appropriate. They only have one show listed right now – an end of July date in their home city – so if you’re in that part of the world, make it a point to catch them play. - Tympanogram