The surprise, really, isn’t how much this sounds like classic-era Joy Division. After all, Electric Litany has made a quick name for itself with its synthy, melancholic etherealism. It’s the presence at the boards of one Alan Parsons. Yes, of Pink Floyd and “Eye in the Sky” fame.
There was the distance, of course. On the one hand, you have a then-unsigned band out of London, and on the other an iconic engineer and producer in California. But just as incredible, really, is the way these musical worlds collide on Enduring Days You Will Overcome, arriving via Inner Ear. Collaborating exclusively online, Electric Litany and Parsons somehow emerge as equals.
Parsons was apparently impressed enough with Electric Litany’s now-four-year-old debut How to Be a Child and Win the War that he agreed to get on board, new sounds unheard. Still, save for an opening quote from Allen Ginsberg (courtesy of his Death to Van Gogh) and a gorgeous interlude at the two-minute mark of “Feather of Ecstacy,” something that provides this extended moment of twilit drama, there’s little here to suggest proggy trips to the dark side of any moons. Instead, Parsons has amplified this group’s fizzy post-modern textures, given their music definition without reshaping it.
When Electric Litany roars back for the conclusion of “Feather of Ecstacy,” they certainly live up to Parsons’ early impression that this could be the next Radiohead. Or, better yet, something more: a band that has an innate understanding of the freedoms that progressive rock established but no inclination toward mimicry of those old-school formulations.
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