When critics use the word to “drowsy” to describe music, they rarely mean it as a complement. It’s a loaded word, one that’s usually used to signify music that’s either boring or dispassionate. Sometimes, though, drowsy just means drowsy, and Timescape Psalm, the debut album from the Riverwest DIY psych project Daycones, is maybe the drowsiest local record I’ve heard this year. Recorded entirely alone by Daycones’ sole member Ryan Janke, the album is paced like a long, late-night walkabout, almost as if Janke just pressed record and let the tape roll, never entertaining the thought that somebody else might hear it. It’s an inward 36-minute listen, but an eventful one Over these 10 tracks, I heard shades of Deerhunter’s sprawling drone, The Church’s guitar shimmer, Sisters of Mercy’s graveyard swagger and Xiu Xiu’s discomfiting shock. And then I listened to it again and didn’t particularly hear any of those things. The impressions it casts evaporate as quickly as it conjures them.
The album is streaming on Bandcamp (embedded below) ahead of its release tomorrow.
