Unsparing Sea, Unsparing Sea

Unsparing Sea is the perfect name for this band. This is staring at a slate-grey ocean kind of music, Meryl Streep in The French Lieutenant’s Woman kind of music. Take “The Sleepless and the Faulty Ends,” for example, where the instrumental section finds lovely cello melodies and some soothing chord changes resting under roiling drums and dissonant squalls. The music definitely fits the oceanic theme.

Lyrically, the songs are uniformly impressionistic and fatalistic. J.R. Bennett’s vocals have the world-weary whine of a Thom Yorke or a “Something in the Way” Cobain, and for me they took a couple of listens to get used to. And in some places, they seem unecessary. On the improvised (mostly) instrumental “Beside Your Name,” Bennett’s lyrical ad-libs don’t do much for me. In fact, I would love to hear the band doing more instrumental numbers; I could easily see them as a more melancholy Red Sparowes.