Popular music critic Anthony Fantano once quipped, "In music, trends are always rising and fading in popularity, but nostalgia never dies." His statement is supported by Comedowns, the fourth album from Bedford-based Luna Waves, the celestial stage name of Rob Muir. Muir's songs are as heavenly as they are grounded by gravitas. Comedowns features lyrics that express nostalgia, fading memories, and lost relationships with a soulful self-awareness. The music is often an amalgam of atmospheric synths and more recognizable rock structures, nearly always delivered with experimental flair.
The watery opening track, "Fragments," succeeds in creating a distinctive alternative pop atmosphere à la Seal with its soaring positive reinforcements ("All of our flaws are beautiful"). The punch-in-the-face opening bars of "Half Awake" lead to summery proclamations of lost love and a pining for the past ("I can't sleep now, my mind's too loud. It always takes me back to you"). Swirling synth sounds paint this otherwise straightforward tambourine-friendly Beatlesesque pop tune into something more lofty.
"Faded Postcards" is a tad too mushy for this reviewer, but the more experimental "Dying Star", with its industrial drum sound and intoxicating synth lines, excels when the poppy vocal melodies are submerged under sinister tones. One might wonder if Comedowns was sequenced chronologically. Muir seems to settle into himself when the confident "Dull Blades" comes around. That track is a clever abstraction of more clichéd sentimental songwriting. There's a cool remove to the self-knowingly kitschy melodies and artistically engineered percussion.
"Fuzzy Dawn" is one of the highlights of this heavy-handed album. The track's suave vocal performance delivers confessional lines ("I'm not OK now, I don't know how to deal") while hazy and unclear music induces a dreamlike state. However, dreams can go on too long. One or two of the tracks on Comedowns could have been cut in favour of a more impactful assortment. Sometimes, Muir's sense of play can get out of hand. "Sad Girl Canon" sounds like an 80s B-movie soundtrack reimagined for the vaporwave generation. Its hooking, undecipherable refrain contributes to the confusion one accumulates when listening, landing somewhere between amused and bemused. "Remnants" is a likely perpetrator in the self-indulgence which results from milking the nostalgia cow a little too hard. Less is always more, except when it's not. For example, "Blind Side" is an admirably honest reassessment of the writer's life ("Couldn't blame it on where I grew up, but the truth is I was just a little dumb,") set to lovable four-chord structures and a genuine joie de vivre.
Meanwhile, "The World I Loved Might Be Gone" offers a more intimate and acoustic-led approach to viewing the past through rose-coloured glasses, with traditional songwriting giving a balladic and epic bent to this touching ode to youth ("the buzz of being young... missing the old songs, missing the old haunts") wrapping up the album's narrative, before the brief "Wish" ends things with a stoic message on how to cope with reality after a comedown ("Don't let them see the tear inside of you, eating you alive").
Comedowns by Luna Waves is an escapist exploration into the past conveyed through sentimental lyrics obscured by atmosphere-heavy pop-rock pieces. The pleasures are not always without guilt; the throwback to 90s romance often feels like Tinkerbell tempting you into Neverland. Sometimes it's better to close the window and get some work done, but at other times, Comedowns proves a nice fantasy from the humdrum.
★★★½