Culture

Rating: 4/5

With the slow onset of the sunnier half of the year, the musically-inclined are already building up their summer playlists, soundtracking lazy drives to the beach, rooftop sunbathing sessions and afternoon backyard drinking sessions that segue into crisp starlit evenings.

If you are in such a phase, you’ll find a fine candidate in Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin’s Fly By Wire. Being something of a fan of the Missouri trio’s work, especially 2008’s Pershing, I picked up Fly By Wire shortly after its release. And boy, do I not regret it.

In overarching aesthetic, Fly By Wire comes across as Swede-pop gone chillwave with a dash of Midwest indie: imagine The Little Hands Of Asphalt had a mid-tempo baby with The Shins. It features a wide range of instrumentation, from dreamy piano/ acoustic guitar interplay (see opening track “Harrison Ford”), to fuzzy surges of keyboard wash, to the reverb-drenched vocal melodies of Philip Dickey and Jonathan James.

Despite all these diverse sounds, the tracks still manage to sound uncluttered and superbly pieced together. In fact, SSLYBY combine these myriad sounds so cohesively that Fly By Wire can sometimes seem a little samey. Thankfully, though, most tracks have enough distinctive nuance to keep the listener interested the whole way through.

The band offers excellent dynamics within their tunes, seamlessly transitioning from bubbly riffs to high energy passages to soft, moving segments – the track “Nightwater Girlfriend” being a prime example. They maintain a certain clarity throughout all of these gear changes, despite their songs’ inherent haziness.

These tracks all have a subtle dancey vibe to them, with vibrant (often programmed) percussion and layered melodies generating a solid sense of movement. If halfway through this album you haven’t tapped your foot or bobbed your head at least a couple of times, the only possible explanation is that you are either asleep or deaf.

Overall, Fly By Wire is a great album, colourful and coherent. Give it a listen through, and maybe even chuck it on your summertime playlist. At just 32 minutes long, you really have no excuse not to check it out.