Tuesday, July 30, 2013

EP// Mild Eyes: Summer '13 One


   
Robert Frost was stuck. For months upon months he had been trying to write the greatest epic poem of his generation. The words flowed like a flood, no sooner hitting the page than falling off it under his stressed and haughty breath. The lines he accepted seemed the next day crushed, their beauty obscured by clumsy construction. Then one day Frost awoke, and he wrote a twenty-line poem that has since become his most loved. 'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood', and he took the one less travelled by. For me, Mild Eye's latest EP seems to mirror Frost's journey. Somehow the music's scope is far greater than could be expressed. I imagine Steven Hodson struggling to articulate this transcendence, but in succumbing to such futility, crafting something truly inspired. The ambient landscapes are rife with yearning and grace and the sad acknowledgement of human limitation. It's a wonderful effort by a promising project.

Listen and buy the EP for pennies over at Mild Eye's Bandcamp.