"A Wind I Can Lean Into" Listening

Today, I’m sure I’ve heard Bike’s new album as much as anyone else in the world, except for Nate.  I love it and I think there are some really interesting things happening with it from an aesthetic point of view, so I will share some of what I hear when I listen to A Wind I Can Lean In To.

1- “Someone’s at my door” – The title makes this a perfect start to a record.  When someone comes to your door, it’s the start of something; a day in the life, a night out, but something both fairly typical and potentially exciting, even life-changing.  Also, the track sounds like chiming doorbells.  If I could, I would re-wire my apartment’s doorbell to play this song, and invite people over just to hear it.

2 – 4- These songs all include a theme of loss: “Separation…”, a “Requiem”, and a child whose mother is gone.  What kind of beginning is this?  But there’s some sense of peace in the middle of the emptiness.  The background synth-slides in “A wind I can lean into” foreshadow “The horror!”.

5- At unpredictable times, in the middle of my day, I sometimes find myself singing “Doo doo doot-doo!” over and over.

6- “My blood, my bones” has become one of my favorite Bike songs.  It’s amazing to me how this song and “Requiem” can both be perfectly Bike, different-sounding as they are, and belong together like they do.  I wonder how this relates to “Song for a motherless child.”

7- Pure turbo-awesomeness.  Triumphant.  Exuberant.

9- Here’s a song where Nate’s acoustic side and synth side dovetail really well.  Lyrically it connects to the album’s theme.

11- Another synthesis, this time between electric guitar and vocals, which we haven’t heard in combination like this before.  I love the sort of circular/cyclical riff, the way its end bleeds back into its beginning an octave higher.

12- “This is where we die” – The title brings everything full circle, from beginning “…at my door” to an ending.  Musically, it’s like nothing else in the Bike catalog, and the warped piano conjures images of a long-lost, glamorous movie past slipping away; aging actress and again reel-to-reel film machine dying together.