The Day We Got What We Deserved<\/i> could very well have been designed to mess with the listener\u2019s head: as the listener goes \u201cWTF?\u201d the Trade Wind guys gently give the middle finger with a smirk on their faces.<\/p>\n
…What We Deserved<\/i> is an art-rock album that never happened. The songs are moody, musically complex, and rich with nuances. They all have a \u201cslow burn\u201d feel, appearing to be building up to something bigger and grander\u2014except they ultimately do not. This is because …What We Deserved<\/i> is 28 minutes long, with most songs clocking under three minutes.<\/p>\n
Until …What We Deserved<\/i>, Trade Wind (a band with members from other bands) has been making riffy hard rock music. And while they have been occasionally dipping their toes into making softer eccentric numbers, nothing from their past work compares with the full-blown, Buddhist monk-level restraint the band have shown on this record.<\/p>\n
The restraint is in the album\u2019s placid sound. It is in frontman Jesse Barnett\u2019s measured vocals, singing as if he is performing at a coffee shop. And even though the song compositions are detailed and cerebral, the restraint is in economizing their duration without ruining them. This (rather quirky) aspect of ...What We Deserved<\/i> is what defines it, what makes it strange, and what makes it wonderful.<\/p>\n
Imagine the band having great ideas and imposing no limits on their creative imagination, like: adding a muted interlude by the saxophone, an instrument that is inherently meant to be played loudly (\u201cWeather Eyes\u201d); having a song in two parts even though the entire thing runs barely over three minutes (\u201cWalk Me In \/\/ Plant Me In Your Garden\u201d); and adding a snippet from an old media interview into the already limited real estate of a song that\u2019s just above the three-minute mark (\u201cNine Tails\u201d).<\/p>\n
Now imagine this band trying to bring to life their ideas within the suffocating confines of their self-imposed restraints\u2026 it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s hard, because …What We Deserved<\/i> is so good.<\/p>\n
…What We Deserved<\/i> could have been a pretty awesome art rock record. Instead it ended up being something totally unimaginable, but damn satisfying. So, to the middle finger that the Trade Wind guys are giving us, we respond with a \u201cthank you\u201d and a smile!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":35230,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[11054],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-47114","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-trade-wind","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=47114"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=47114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}