Alone with the Sound the Mind Makes

by kolezanka

Overview

For the follow-up to Place Is, her 2021 full-length debut, kolezanka's Kristina Moore rejoined longtime collaborator Ark Calkins in the studio (in this case, Pulp Arts in Gainesville, Florida) with a batch of songs written during a long winter of pandemic isolation spent in her Brooklyn apartment. The resulting album, Alone with the Sound the Mind Makes, consists of a surprisingly playful set of 11 tracks that explore memories, streams of consciousness, and dreams as well as the encroaching New York City. Even songs with titles like "Mania" and particularly "City Summer Sweat" are bright and whimsical, with the latter employing a Casio-tone version of a circus calliope, weird, '50s sci-fi-like laser sounds, Polish backing lyrics, and a false ending. Elsewhere, the comical and likewise psychedelic "Eye Contact" approximates a celestial chorus to match the drama of re-emergence, albeit while acknowledging "It's hard to be alive." Things get a little heavier musically on tracks like "Cheers!," a song about enduring trauma, and on the melancholy "A Body," with its Brazil-inflected strumming, although its lilting lyricism, soaring choral vocals, and trilling clarinet keep lyrics about self-consciousness and perception in the realm of the fantastical. Moore takes on service industry work on "Slapstick," which transitions from programmed drums and tinny keys to live drums and electric guitar ("Is there a right way to smile at all these saccharine platitudes?"). Just as kolezanka's puckish palette starts to bleed songs into one another, the more earnest "River Rushing," which was inspired by a dream about her childhood home in Arizona, closes the album on a poetic note, with images of a "season-less desert," mountains, stars, and a developing Biblical flood that provides Alone with the Sound the Mind Makes' one true band jam. ~ Marcy Donelson

Product Details

Release Date:	02/24/2023
Label:	Bar / Bar/None Records / None
UPC:	0032862029912
Rank:	108338

Tracks

1. Koszmary
2. Mania
3. Slapstick
4. City Summer Sweat
5. Cheers!
6. Eye Contact
7. Canals of Our City
8. A Body
9. Goliath
10. Saddle Up, Cowboy
11. River Rushing

Album Credits

Performance Credits

kolezanka   Primary Artist
Steven Head   Guitar
Ark Calkins   Bass,Drums,Vocals,Percussion,Vibraphone,Handclapping
Kristina Moore   Bass,Piano,Guitar,Vocals,Synthesizer,Drum Machine
Elana Riordan   Clarinet

Technical Credits

Jonathan Schenke   Mixing,Mastering
Danny Clifton   Engineer
Julie Chencinski   Design
Ark Calkins   Producer,Group Member
Kristina Moore   Composer,Producer,Group Member
Mariano Garay   Assistant
Hunter Jayne   Engineer
Jesus Charris   Art Direction
Lily Ruckstuhl   Engineer
Mateo Ruiz Gonzalez   Photography
Megham Marin   Photography