It’s a curious counterbalance, these more expansive, experimental arrangements forcing the songs’ reclusive tendencies out into the open. Throughout this intensely poetic, introspective album, currents of guilt, regret and resolution battle in quiet turbulence, the group’s trademark harmonies and acoustic folk settings augmented with additional sonic strata, from the closing coda of piano, woodwind and strings riding the martial beat of “Cassius, -”, and the gentle, burnished swells of brass and wispy violins left stranded at the end of “Mearcstapa”, to the welter of looming industrial drones and indistinct vocal keening that concludes “I Should See Memphis”. Similarly, “On Another Ocean (January/June)” surely reflects upon his move from Seattle to an East Coast college, a journey of which he eventually realises, “Wherever you run, you see all you leave behind you lies inside”.
This Janus-faced, schizoid attitude suggests one interpretation of the album title, as the singer’s extrovert, bandleader past attempts to surmount his introvert, academic inclinations.
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