`EC4` is the fourth album from Cincinnati proto-heavy rockers ELECTRIC CITIZEN and comes seven years after their last album `Helltown`.
The album opens with `Mire` with haunting keys, restrained guitar riffs, and thumping drums. Although the title might suggest a complicated or unpleasant situation from which it is difficult to extricate oneself, the number itself has a delightful dreaminess about it. There`s a heavier depth to `Static Vision` which rolls along fairly rhythmically. It slows midway and has some complimenting reflective vocal harmonies along with an understated guitar solo before it resumes its previous rhythmic journey.
`Smokey` feels like a driving song from the mists of time, a number to blast out while driving down the highway with the windows open. There`s an almost spiritual vibe to `Traveler’s Moon` which is also known as `Hunters Moon` a name given to the full moon in October. It’s a time when, traditionally, hunters would venture out to find food for the coming winter months, as the fields are barren after the harvest. The track evokes a feel of looking to the past, to our forefathers for guidance.
`Tuning Tree` is another offering that has a mystical come divine ambience that really draws you in quite hypnotically. The title `Moss` conjures up damp shady locations but the song has a real earthy depth as moss does itself, as it stabilises soil and retains moisture to support plant life and even mitigate climate change.
`Lizard Brain` has a real edginess about it, a real psychedelic tinged trip which mirrors the title`s indication of the part of the brain to which primitive, non-rational or self-interested behaviour is attributed. There`s a pretty celestial feel to `Other Planets` an at times slow burn that becomes fairly spellbinding and enticing.
The final cut `Flower of Salt` may refer to the relatively rare and expensive culinary ingredient, a type of sea salt known for its delicate, bright white crystals and subtle flavour. There is a real thoughtful tenderness to this closing track.
`EC4` is filled with fuzzed-out riffs, haunting melodies, dreamy reveries, and a blend of psychedelia veering towards heavy rock at times. In Laura Dolan, the quintet have a superb vocalist with a varied and at times ethereal range but the auditory backing from Ross Dolan, Nick Vogelpohl, Nate Wagner, and Owen Lee is sublime and combines a marriage made in heaven.
ELECTRIC CITIZEN`s `EC4` is entrancing, absorbing, and spellbinding and will take you to another dimension during it`s forty minute lifespan.
Rating 8.5/10
