Album Review: Alt-J - This Is All Yours

I guess there won't be a review of Alt-j's This Is All Yours which won't mention the departure of one of its founding members and guitarist Gwil Sainsbury. Well, yeah - it did happen and surely affected the band's writing process, live set-up and all that, but damn - 3 complete listens in the album I'm already madly in love with what these guys created. *ordering the vinyl*

Frankly said, I don't even know what to begin with. There was an insane amount of Internet buzz around the release of this record and everyone who had the chance to listen to An Awesome Wave knows why. Out of nowhere (for me and many others), these 4 guys came and completely blew the scene away. They are one of the few bands for which I have a hard time identifying their influences. Both albums are a watermark when it comes to experimenting with sounds.

This Is All Yours. 14 songs. 55 minutes.

I think the record is far more diverse in sounds and not only because its significantly longer, but there is just a bigger range of genres being blended all together and I don't necessarily mean "Left Hand Free", which is like one of those odd ingredients you add to a meal. It's like the fresh herb you add after the cooking process is completed.

I won't be doing a track-by-track review of the record, nor I will stress on how amazing "Every Other Freckle" & "Hunger Of The Pine" are. As usual, I would simply advice you to take the journey through all tracks and build the puzzle yourself.

My personal favourite track? "The Gospel Of John Hurt", which apparently was reformed from an old material which didn't make it on the previous album. The build-up around the 3rd minute makes me wanna transform the extensions of arms into drum sticks and play along with the track. Play that before moving to the next paragraph. Uplifting...

I think the best way to describe how I feel towards this record is to portray you a scene from the book I'm currently reading. As I was passionately digging into the pages the of this scene I felt like This All Is Yours is the perfect soundtrack to the settings. The book is called Enduring Love by Ian McEwan.

"I see us from three hundred feet up, through the eyes of the buzzard we had watched earlier, soaring, circling and dipping in the tumult of currents: five men running silently towards the center of a hundred-acre field. [...] I'm holding back, delaying information. I'm lingering in the prior moment because it was a time when other outcomes were still possible; the convergence of six figures in a flat green space has a comforting geometry from the buzzard's perspective, the knowable, limited plan of the snooker table. [...] I think that while we were still converging, before we made contact, we were in a state of a mathematical grace. What were we running towards? I don't think any of us would ever know fully."