by Jacob Letkeman
Healing Through A Sonic Figure opens up with “Hindsight.” This happens to be my (current) favourite track on the album. It comes on all at once, but gently, with plaintive vocal melodies that swoop and dance over top of the guitars, all of it bathed in lush reverb that washes over you, dreamlike and calm, somehow reassuring in it’s mournful feeling.
The energy slowly builds over the next few tracks, developing into an absolutely gigantic sound. Tight, punchy riffs intermingle with intuitive dynamic shifts, all the while, Lizzy Burt’s haunting vocals paint themselves across cavernous soundscapes.
The track “Turn” shifts into “Slowly” with a sharp twist that grabs your attention, further accentuating this band’s keen feel for the impact of intense dynamic changes. The building tension through these tracks is palpable, and comes to a head with “Colleen”. Catchy and driving, it brings in flavours of 1960’s garage and psychedelic pop as a massive wall of sound rising to a crescendo.
Juniper Bush closes out their album with “And You”, bringing us back to a familiar theme established in their opening track “Hindsight” using what is probably one of my favourite framing devices used in music – the bookend. In doing so, they manage to further cement the feeling that you’ve just been taken on a journey through their music.
“And You” brings you back down, it takes your hand and walks you through the tension and melancholia, and leaves you feeling as though there is still hope.
Healing Through A Sonic Figure is aptly named.
As a person trying to come to terms with numerous aspects of my own existence, I found catharsis in what Juniper Bush has created, and I know many others out there will too.