There are two types of sunrise. There are those you see during the
winter, the ones that skulk in while people are already on their third cup of shit office tea. And then there are those that come at the end of a long night … this type are the interesting type.
They are interesting because they remind us that the best days are like the best people – they burn their candles at both ends.
Thankfully, Sunrise Over Europe are the interesting type.
There is plenty to be said about what this record sounds like, but there is a list of similar artists at the bottom of this review, and besides, you could always just seek it out and listen to it yourself. Suffice to say, it oscillates between compact and controlled post-rock and a clutch of more delicate folk-driven passages. If that sounds remotely like your thing, then you know what to do – go and buy it, steal it, pretend you listened to it, put it on while you make cups of that shit office tea, or maybe even learn to love it and let it soundtrack some sort of heartbreak or love affair or go-kart race or whatever it is humans are supposed to do with music these days.
More interestingly, ‘We Raised The Flames…’ is an utterly devastating portrait of loss and fear, performed with the sort of shameless, bruised honesty that after a while ceases to seem fragile and starts to take on that rarest of qualities: defiance.
There is an atmosphere of desperation to this record which makes for
compelling, but occasionally uneasy listening. If you have ever had the sense that there is some sort of abstract, whispered conversation going on between the ghosts of all the people you have loved and the mounting sense of dread that comes every time you listen to the news, then that is the exact feeling this record gives me. If you know what I mean, then you’ll know just what a powerful and eerie feeling that is. If, on the other hand, you have never had that feeling, then firstly, lucky you, but secondly, in short, this record is beautiful, angry, heartbreaking and frightening and you should listen to Sunrise Over Europe immediately, because that feeling will come your way eventually and you might as well get used to it now.
There is a theory that on account of the impossibility of writing about death, which by its nature is ‘beyond’ time, that artists tend to transfer these unsay-able phrases into broader images of space or terrain. If there is any truth in this, then “ We Raised the Flames … ” is a record trying its very hardest to come to terms with loss. At every juncture there are images of roads or mountains, or seas, or cities … and on the most basic of levels, it is hard not to be deeply moved listening to this band try to plot out a functional map in the hope of navigating the geography of absence.
There are moments when bereft and frail melody lines are rallied into
renewed anger by an unexpected wall of noise, or a delicate violin line pulls a song back to it’s centre where it can regroup and refocus. These are the moments where Sunrise Over Europe give notice that they are quite obviously something special. Case in point, during ‘Escape is an Art, Art is an Escape’, there are a few seconds before the chorus, when (mixed incredibly abrasively) a bass note practically says ‘ fuck this, fuck you, you are a twat, this is all bullshit, I’ll be at the bar watching the world burn …’ In case it isn’t obvious, this is a very VERY good thing.
Maybe, at the heart of things, this is what makes the record as good as it is– the sense of a person, of a band, having an argument with itself about whether to give in or whether to keep fighting for a future that is a bit better. Most records don’t even ask the question, let alone answer it as resoundingly as Sunrise Over Europe have managed here.
The closest most of us will ever get to ‘Raising the Flames’ is at the end of a long night, watching one of those interesting types of sunrises, the type that flickers up the side of buildings and tower blocks, the type that looks like it only needs the smallest of sparks to ignite an entire continent into a funeral pyre. It is hard to shake the feeling that most people, let alone most bands, would face a future like this with nothing but fear.
It takes a special sort of belief indeed to look the embers of a life you once knew and think, “Fuck it, we’ll build a city on the ashes …”
Similar artists: EITS, Rachels, Beirut, Antlers, GSYBE!
