Trembling Blue Stars: C/D, S/D?

Pre-orders for the new album is on Bandcamp. "The Circling of the Seasons" has been in constant rotation and it's grown on me a lot. This is an early album of the year hopeful for me.

LIGHTNING IN A TWILIGHT HOUR <nore✧✧✧@lightninginatwilighth✧✧✧.bandc✧✧✧.c✧✧>
2:56 PM (4 minutes ago)
to me

Greetings Austin Anderson,
Thank you for your pre-order of Overwintering by LIGHTNING IN A TWILIGHT HOUR. The full digital album has just been released!

cue Jack Nicholson in Batman: "Gentlemen! Let's broaden our minds!" (presses play on boombox)

Okay, one listen and the man can do no wrong and it's good BUT—

This is a lot for an hour long album. I expected more ambient stuff (there is none). It's a very mellow album; I think there was maybe one song on the second half that had drums in it? Some of the lyrics are weird, even for him. Most of it is very reminiscent of the stuff he did on the two Occasional Keepers albums, but even more acoustic strummy and dream poppy. That being said, it's probably among the prettiest music he's ever done and there's two songs that hit me as instant band classics ("Delphinium" and "Slow Motion Spirits"). Very preliminary thought is that it's better than the first album, but doesn't quite have the sustained wow factor of the All the Ships at Sea EP. I would certainly consider "Delphinium" one of the best songs he's ever done. Four mics, for now.

Whoa, All Music going to bat for Bob! That's the highest overall rating they've given any of his bands since Northern Picture Library.

No, I'm mistaken: that's the highest overall rating since the Field Mice!

So I've been living with this album for about a month and it's stayed in pretty regular rotation. I love it and it is my so far album of the year. Agree with my initial assessment of about 4 mics/4 stars/8.0 and that "Delphinium" is the easy highlight. On further listens, some of it is very reminiscent of the more atmospheric Northern Picture Library material: "The Cinematographer as Painter" is one of the weirdest calm songs I've ever heard and "Natural Light" has a purposely discordant progression that never resolves — just kind of unsettled and tenuous; something he's never really done before (or at least, not to this degree). I knew what to expect and it's not the best thing he's done under this band name, but I still feel like Overwintering exceeded my expectations pretty easily.

I'm hoping he decides to follow tradition and put out a quick EP in the next year or so before disappearing again.

in lieu of anything else ambient-y from bob and friends so far, i made a playlist of all of the ambient/wordless/found sound songs from throughout his catalogue: rjw kankyo ongaku+ambient.

so future conditional was an offshoot thing from piano magic and bob guested on a couple tracks and i was under the impression that it was a one-off. decent album, fun side project.

apparently they've made another album and bob is guesting with beth now and there's maybe a new order cover involved? okay, sure.

i missed this. fuck.

still haven't heard that. it was another of bob's tapeworm collabs — presumably another ambient thing. wonder what it sounds like.

anyway, do love when bob breaks out the 12 string—
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUUI9ddDeOM
"abba on the jukebox" (1996)