It was kind of cool when there was the time when The Avalanches were this mystical group that made Since I Left You and bounced, leaving the people to wonder what happened to them. Those of you who were around when their long-awaited second album Wildflower was announced and eventually released in the summer of 2016 will know how great a feeling it was to hear new Avalanches music again. I was there, and I tell you it was a huge damn deal. A couple jams on there I still rock today. Didn’t really like We Will Always Love You all that much. It was very fine. With four years between that album and Wildflower, it was a quick turnover by Avalanches standards, but to me …Love You lacked that oomph that made the two prior so effective. It was sleek pop music. Sleek pop music by the Avalanches. But sleek pop music still, which as a genre I’m not quite into. With news, old news at this point, that the fourth album is in the works, I just hope that the oomph returns.*

I can tell you the first time I heard Since I Left You in full was on my phone, lying in bed, in between waking up and caving in to get up for the rest of the day. Years ago, I’ll say 2013 again. The fact that it was virtually one big instrumental experience split into 18 tracks without any proper lyrics meant I could just relax and let it all wash over me, didn’t have to focus too much. Songs on there I was familiar already were the obvious ones like ‘Frontier Psychiatrist’ and the title track to a lesser extent. And Pitchfork gave it a 9.5, so to the impressionable, I think, 18-year-old I was, this was a cool album to be listening to. I admire the album for all its worth, but it’s never really one I go back to for active listening. Like, it’s a great, great album, the songs constructed by all the sampling are ridiculous. But it’s all the sampling that makes the album such a dense one. It’s a dense record. And I think it needs a certain environment for the whole to truly be appreciated in. I don’t find myself in the dead of winter, darker nights, cold temperatures, thinking, “What would be great now is Since I Left You.” So that’s how I feel about that. The one track on there that does everything for me though, any time of the year, is its fourth one, ‘Two Hearts in 3/4 Time”.

‘Two Hearts…’ sort of begins in the tail-end of preceding song ‘Radio’, with the opening “Oh, can’t you hear it?” sample trickling in from there. ‘Radio’ itself contains a persistent thump that lasts throughout almost its entire duration, so to follow it up with ‘Two Hearts…’ which reveals itself as this lovely, waltz-time, almost spacey affair – once you get past the showy Cabaret samples – that makes you feel like you’re floating on air… that’s some good sequencing right there. A description of the song would just be me listing out the samples used to make the track, which doesn’t make for great reading. So I think it’d be better for you to have some active listening for yourselves while you read along. What I’ll state bluntly is, I like the use of every sample in this song. The repeating descending vocal melody is pretty. The jazzy ascending Rhodes piano, least I think that’s what it is, is astral-like. The panic-inducing ending taken from John Cale’s ‘Ghost Story’ is hectic and maybe a little frightening, but brilliantly brings in an unexpected left turn. And I also like how, before a particular section fully enters the mix, you can hear it slightly in the background of the section that precedes it. A little taste of what’s to come is subtly revealed each time. The album keeps on trucking as the song rolls right into ‘Avalanche Rock’. And if we want to go there, ‘Two Hearts…’ is in 6/8, isn’t it?

*lil’ update – At the time I wrote that, ‘Together’ and ‘Every Single Weekend’ hadn’t yet been released. I kind of heard the former, haven’t heard the latter. I’m gonna wait for the album. It’s almost here.