REVIEW: Karmatrain by Outside In
Lately I've found it rare to just down and listen to an album, and immediately get the sense that something… magical is about to unfold around your ears - but that's pretty much how KARMATRAIN, the long-awaited album from Auckland progressive rock act Outside In hit me.
That may appear sounding fan-boyish and somewhat pretentious already, but wait til you read that I'm calling this my Album Of The Year - at least as far as New Zealand releases go, and high up on my top list over all!
Whilst I've known of the band for several years, because of event clashes I never found myself having the pleasure of catching them live - but having sat with the album for the last few weeks - I've realised this as being a serious error in judgement on my part - and one that needs correcting as soon as possible.
If entering a national pandemic lockdown wasn’t bad enough, an unfortunate timing of hardware and data loss left me with little access to media, so for the past few weeks I’ve been listening mostly to the prerelease of Karmatrain - so it comes rather handy that I love almost everything about this release - and now that I can listen to the full quality FLAC versions via Bandcamp - even better!
It was early evening when I first put the album on - lowered the lights and pulled on the headphones…
Let Me Go opens up the album with a haunting organ, acoustic guitar, and Michael Brown's minimalistic vocal line straight off makes me pause, and just listen - musically we’re in an open field with the world laid open, already I’m getting a sense of the space this albums about to fill, but it’s a 4 second keyboard "solo" at 3:22 that just slapped me with an overly huge grin that had me rewinding the track at least 10 times just to revisit the first moment of many on this album.
Beyond the big ticket bands most people would know like Pink Floyd and Radiohead - I knew little about the bands actual influences - but as I journey through tracks such as Blue Dragon, Morning Warning, Mushrooms and The Garden of Light I keep hearing subtle elements that remind me of Rikard Sjöblom (Beardfish, Gungfly, Big Big Train) along with 3 (and to a lesser extent, Coheed and Cambria) all mixed up with what uniquely makes Outside In such a pleasure to hear.
Following this morning’s release, I managed to catch up with vocalist Michael Brown for a quick chat about the album, and those influences:
I’ve heard that comparison before (Coheed & Cambria), I don’t think I’ve listened to whole album tho - our influences as a group are so vast that those are the kind of common ones but I don’t think we really sound like any of the influences that we mention. They’ve influence our approach to songwriting maybe but not the sounds so much.
The main songs writers and me and Jonnie, we’re about a 50/50 partnership - I write all the lyrics and vocal melodies of course, but sometimes he’ll write a song from scratch and sometimes I’ll write one from scratch; a lot of time we’ll bounce ideas of each other back and forth until they get to a point.
It’s been about two and half years since we started the first demo, which was “The Garden of Light”, Jonnie and I started working together about twelves years ago, and about two and half years ago we actually weren’t working together, we were on a bit of a break and then I sent him a demo for Garden and then he came back with an arrangement that was so sick, the band at the time were really keen to get him back just because it was such a nice interpretation of something I’d chucked him as a chord progression on piano, and he came back with this fantastic prog rock arrangement of it.
That was the start of Karmatrain.
And now, here we are with the culmination of all that creative energy - a twelve track progressive rock masterpiece that in my mind could easily sit next to, and even compete with the likes of The Pineapple Thief, the aforementioned Beardfish/Gungfly, and Gazpacho.
For me - Karmatrain should be listed as essential listening for any discerning music lover 2020 playlists.
Standout moments:
The keyboard “solo” in Let Me Go
The highpass filter mix/shift on the drums during Bridges
Everything there is about “The Garden of Light”
So is there anything negative to say about the album - or am I just full of gushing delight? So far, for me - no - I find nothing to fault about the album, only myself for not having cancelled other events so I could have caught Outside In at Ding Dong Lounge prior to lockdown.
Hopefully it won't be too long before we all have the opportunity to hear this album in full live.
If you like awesome music that both makes you think, dream, and simply sounds amazing - then go checkout Karmatrain as soon as possible.