Bipolar Explorer - Last Lights

 Released: June 21

With their latest album, Bipolar Explorer solidifies their place as veritable masters of the introspective and shoegaze-y. Sylvia Solanas’s deep and whisper-y vocals bring a sense of the concrete to the otherwise ethereal textures brought forth by both her and multi-instrumentalist Michael Serafin-Wells. Even with what we have come to expect from the band, there are still some surprising moments in which the shoegaze vibes fade and we are thrust into a more abstract and ghostly plane, like on “Secret Angels Beneath the West Side Highway Overpass” which feels much like walking through an abandoned corridor of similar aesthetics. The persistent squeak of what sounds like an errant footstep on a hard floor and a general aura of environmental noise without form makes for something haunting and simultaneously peaceful. 

But for every strange dark and daunting moment on the album, there are those beautiful and washed out guitar and vocal driven tracks such as “Turnabout,” a surreal and joyously hypnotic track about turning those the one you love even when the world around you seems to be crumbling and suffering. There are similar themes throughout the rest of the album, most obviously in the lyrics of those tracks that have them. “The Ides of March” touches on a similar themes though it morphs from the perspective of someone being there to someone who is gone forever. There’s a contention throughout these tracks that pokes gently at the idea of finding solace in other people while feeling a wariness and even some kind of weariness about such reliance. 

All of this plays out over the course of an incredible twenty-six tracks, making for a rather epic nearly two hour experience. It takes the listener through crowed halls, desolate in-between spaces, and intimate moments of both happiness and sorrow. Coming out with a double-CD of material is impressive as it is, but Last Lights makes it seem effortless and natural, bringing us a spanning and fuzzy picture of what we consider the most difficult thing for any of us to feel - a sense of belonging.