Eifelian

The continuing efforts of Autumn's Grey Solace over the years have involved steady progression into a sound of their own within a larger style in turn. The duo's roots in the music of acts like the Cocteau Twins, Love Spirals Downwards, and other atmospheric rock partnerships remain constant; where the combined strength of Erin Welton's voice and Scott Ferrell's music lies best is in exploring the pair's intersections. Thematically, Eifelian draws its name as well as its song titles from the pre-human history of the planet — an ambitious range to say the least, from "Archean Earth" and "Faint Young Sun" to "Holocene" and "Fauna." The close, intimate flow of the album's 14 songs suggests less of a direct evocation of that crush of time as it does a dreamy reflection on time and timelessness. From the start, Welton's heavily treated vocal sighs and Ferrell's acoustic/electric arrangements of classic gauzy shimmer never fully reinvent the form but elegantly explore it, a near hour's worth of enjoyably melancholic contemplations for late summer afternoons.