Within These Walls

Within These Walls

Since 1992, husband and wife team Damon & Naomi have made fragile, dreamy, transformative music that is most certainly not for everyone. While one doubts this duo will ever rock (and they did once, in a way, with the seminal space-rock outfit Galaxy 500), one is also certain that there will always be a small, specific, and rabid audience for their brand of moody atmospherics. This, their sixth studio album, is an uneven mix, with the duo and their coterie of support musicians veering at times into a sort of 1970s Adult Contemporary mode (mostly due to the style and timbre of the horn arrangements on “Red Flower” and especially “On the Aventine”). But they catch themselves, and go on to produce some of their most moving music yet. Vocalist/bassist/keyboardist Naomi Yang gives a bow to the classics of folk (ala Fairport Convention) on the mini-epic “The Well,” which ends with a gorgeous, weeping cello, and on the haunting, fairy tale-like “Cruel Queen.” “A Silver Thread” and “The Turnaround” are both simply hypnotic, the former having a flawless, drifting feel and the latter creating a gentle lullaby with its circular, acoustic guitar parts and Krukowski’s vocals double tracked and backed by Yang’s own vocals. “Defibrillation” dabbles in Jeff Buckley-esque gloom, and “Stars Never Fade” marches with a rather majestic, imperious feel, carried by the currents of co-hort Michio Kurihara’s intense guitar notes. Rainy day music exemplified.

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