EP review: Oceansize – Home & Minor

The more committed regular reader of TDP will be at least be peripherally aware of Mancunian out-field prog geniuses Oceansize, because I tend to use them as a convenient benchmark for anything I find to be excellent that is otherwise unclassifiable. I don’t really have a “favourite band” (I mean, how can you pick just one?), but if you asked me to make a top ten list once a week for a year, Oceansize are one of the few outfits who’d appear in almost every one. It’s been two years since Frames, their third album; a few months back there was a live DVD compilation thingy (Feed To Feed, which I haven’t seen yet), but the Home & Minor EP is the first fresh material there’s been for a while now. So I couldn’t help but be a little gutted when the grapevine said it was going to be a deliberately mellow affair, focussing on the intricate and delicate sides of Oceansize rather than the hard, heavy and sharp.

Which isn’t to say that I only like the loud and angry bits of their material. Far from it! But you can’t help but worry when a favoured band or artist announces a new direction… what if they break the magic? What if the thing you love most is the bit they’ve grown bored of? We’ve all been burned this way, I guess, and while you get more philosophical about it as the years pass (artists aren’t beholden to our whims, much as we may want them to be) it remains part of the nervy thrill of obtaining a new album. Despite getting access to the streaming version nearly three weeks after release (sigh) I’ve actually spent most of the afternoon trying to ignore it and get on with other things. Like good food or fine wine, some things deserve your complete attention if you want to truly savour the experience.

But look at me waffling around the matter at hand… Home & Minor. Is it any good? Well, I sure like it, though I miss the deep chasm-like contrasts of light and shade that made me fall for Oceansize in the first place. And it really does feel like an act of deliberate curational choice rather than a change of direction; if you’re familiar with their other stuff, you’ll hear the same off-kilter rhythms, deceptive arpeggios (guitar, keys, glockenspiels), understated melodies and abstract lyrics that you’ve grown to love. What’s absent is the hugeness and serrated power of the preceding albums, replaced with something altogether more intimate. Disarmingly intimate, in fact; the title track especially is like being sat in Mike Vennart’s head as he recalls the lullabies of his youth, and I almost feel rude for intruding, like a thief wandering through his house, feeling the eyes of the family portraits peering down in voiceless disapproval…

… which, if nothing else, proves that the perennial ability of Oceansize to flick my Shoddy Poetic Imagery switch is not diminished by them leaving the distortion pedals in the cupboard. With its mellow and haunting pallet of instruments and its deference to space and texture, it’s not going to supercede Effloresce as my introductory text for fans of the heavy stuff, but Home & Minor manages to highlight the delicate subtleties that could (and should, if there’s any justice in the world) bring them to a wider audience in the post-rock and abstract indie spheres. I wouldn’t say it’s their best work, but nor is it their worst; it’s just another side of them. Definitely a recommended purchase for the committed fan; everyone else should probably start elsewhere and work steadily inwards toward this eye in their storm.