Description:
Orcas – How to Color a Thousand Mistakes (2024)
Review:
When a band reunites after a lengthy hiatus, it's usually a compliment to say that it sounds like they haven't aged a day. In Orcas' case, however, it does feel like a significant amount of time has passed since Benoît Pioulard and Rafael Anton Irisarri last teamed up -- but in the best possible way. In the ten years after the duo's 2014 album Yearling, Irisarri and Pioulard gained experiences -- in life as well as music -- that make How to Color a Thousand Mistakes some of their most fully realized work together or on their own. Orcas embrace the wisdom and fresh starts that the passing of time can offer with songs that are notably more direct and emphatic than anything they've done in the past. On the standout "Riptide," Pioulard muses, "disarray gives way to fluency" as he navigates the song's stormy guitars and gliding keyboards. The timing of Orcas' reunion also fits in perfectly with the dream pop and shoegaze renaissance that kicked into high gear around the time the duo put the project on pause. How to Color a Thousand Mistakes emphasizes their genre bona fides, starting with the musicians Pioulard and Irisarri recruited to add sonic ballast to the album. Chief among them is Slowdive drummer Simon Scott, who co-wrote the stargazing ballad "Next Life" and, aided by Mono drummer Dahm Majuri Cipolla, gives the shimmering interplay of "Bruise" a mesmerizing backbone. Here and across the album, Orcas are able to float but also make the ground shake; the guitar eruptions that threaten to split "Wrong Way to Fall" in two are wonderfully, unexpectedly heavy. The rest of How to Color a Thousand Mistakes offers quite a few surprises, like the bright new wave chime of "Swells" and "Fare"'s Durutti Column-like flow. Amidst all this change, Irisarri's attention to sonic detail and Pioulard's graceful vocals and poetic lyrics are still the foundations of Orcas' music. Both shine brightly on How to Color a Thousand Mistakes, making it a welcome return for longtime fans and a prime introduction for anyone who missed them the first time around.
— Review by Heather Phares at allmusic
Track List:
01 - Sidereal
02 - Wrong Way to Fall
03 - Riptide
04 - Heaven's Despite
05 - Next Life
06 - Swells
07 - Fare
08 - Without Learning
09 - Bruise
10 - Umbra
Media Report:
Genre: ambient, dream-pop
Origin: New York, New York, USA 
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)
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