Listen: Craft Spells - "Komorebi"

13 May 2014, 21:10 | Written by Jon Putnam

(Tracks)

(Craft Spells)

It’s little wonder and none more inspired that Craft Spells’ mastermind Justin Paul Vallesteros chose the Japanese term “Komorebi” as the title of the second single from the band’s upcoming sophomore LP, Nausea. A purely untranslatable word, it is a term used in reference to “sunlight filtering through trees”.

Lead album single, “Breaking The Angle Against The Tide”, offered the first glimpse of a sound more polished and ornate than 2011’s lo-fi leaning, reverb-laden debut, Idle Labor. Where that song plays up to its title featuring kinetic rhythms and ephemerally mobile guitar lines, “Komorebi” indeed wafts and drifts akin to its namesake.

The melody, fashioned by a flute (likely a synth) and strings, saunters atop a shuffling rhythm and quietly jaunty piano line that reveals itself during the vocal passages. Vallesteros sings of internalisation and solitude with a shade of wooziness and hint of naïveté not unlike Ben Gibbard. The cherry on top here is an exquisite, Far East-tinged guitar solo midway through; it’s a good measure dream-pop, a dollop of jangle-pop, and a little bit psych.

Nausea will be available on 10 June courtesy of Captured Tracks and Craft Spells will feature at Brooklyn’s Northside Festival on 13 June.