A Burial at Sea • Close to Home [LP]

A cascade of brass-fuelled euphoria arcs across the velvet night as infinite waves of guitar delay lap at a shore both familiar and foreign; explorative, optimistic and triumphant…  Inimitable post-rock outsiders A Burial At Sea return with ‘Close To Home’, a soaring sonic love letter to the places and people that shaped them, released on February 23rd, 2024 via Berlin’s Pelagic Records.

The collective’s first new music since the eponymous debut full-length in 2020, ‘Close To Home’ is a breathtaking evolution of their unique, brass-led blend of shoegaze, math-metal and blissed out afro-jazz that draws inspiration, influence and insight from the rich Gaelic cultural heritage of their Irish homeland.

Now based across the Irish Sea in Liverpool, principal songwriters Patrick Blaney and Dara Tohill composed the bones of ‘Close To Home’ over lockdown in an intense period of introspection, enveloping years of creative ideas brought to life in the here and now. Haunting, bittersweet melodies plucked from childhood, folksong memories ebb and flow like a stream of consciousness as the eclectic collective dial down the overdrive and let the ephemeral, organic spaces where distortion meets horn section sing out the loudest… 

For example, album opener and lead single ‘páirc béal uisce’ is post-rock patience, reified. A masterfully meditative, slow-burn crescendo that builds upon staccato guitar loops and shimmering cymbals before finally bursting into panoramic, half-time elation that washes over the entirety of the record with remarkable and inspirational conviction. Follow up piece ‘tor head’ is an immediate, pounding paean to the rugged Northern Irish coastline; opening on a hailstorm of palm-muted guitars and fizzing polyrhythmic percussion that channels the raw energy of the band’s math-rock roots through the trials and tribulations of the intervening years. This contemplation is none more evident than on the haunting ‘masterfred’, which serves as an awesome showcase of A Burial At Sea’s latent musical maturity and happens to be named after founding member Dara Tohill’s dad, Fred.

Whilst the band’s penchant for blistering post-hardcore velocity is a welcome presence on ‘Close To Home’, ‘Masterfred’ shows that A Burial At Sea aren’t afraid to turn the volume down as well; giving way to a deeper, organic dynamic that picks up every intimate detail, rattle and hum. Everything comes home though on album closer ‘DALL’, a six-minute siren song of ethereal, jazz-soaked horn arpeggios that ride an ever-rising tide of anthemic guitar work and sparkling, syncopated grooves. Short for ‘Cushendall’, the village in which fellow founder Patrick Blaney was born and raised, ‘DALL’ is the aural embodiment of the band looking to their past as much as they drive forwards to parts unknown, alive with hope and potential.

First making waves in 2018 with unbridled bombastic creativity of  ‘…And The Sum Of Its Parts’ EP, A Burial At Sea turned the traditionally austere post-rock frown upside down. Quickly catching the attention of like-minded, international genre-benders And So I Watch You From Afar (ASIWYFA), This Will Destroy You ,Caspian and Some Become Hollow Tubes (Godspeed You! Black Emperor), the band subsequently spent months on tour in support, honing their incendiary craft and gaining a loyal fan base across Europe in the process.

Despite being landlocked by forces outside of their control, A Burial At Sea continued their adventure by looking inwards to produce ‘Close To Home’: a staggering refinement of the band’s already singular instrumental sound. The confidence, experience and sheer musical assuredness behind this album renders any generic labels of post rock immediately obsolete. ‘Close To Home’ proves without a doubt that A Burial At Sea are indeed more than the sum of their parts; positioning the band on the crest of a truly progressive wave of uplifting, anthemic post-rock.