Upon listening to the first track of Beast, Please Be Still, my thought process went as follows:

“Hm. This is nice. Nothing terribly exciting here. Sounds like maybe a weird psychedelic folk revisionist band with a hint of post-rock…This is kind of simple stuff; simple melodies, simple instrumentation... Woah. Ohh. This is interesting. What a nice augmentation instruments and altered emotions. This really brings it up a notch... Oh my. This is intense. I was hoping something like this would happen. This is epic. That’s what I’ve been expecting. Wow. This is some first track. I wonder if the rest of the album will be this way?”

Turns out it is. If you listen to the first track on Beast, Please Be Still I am certain you will be able to discern the three distinct moments of critical epiphany as I experienced the first track on this astonishingly complex and accomplished album.  This album was two years in the making and, frankly, it shows.

The songs are extremely lyrical. The music will start with a certain theme and emotion and then, through careful swells and dips, the music travels from a preparation for a journey to the main trials, obstacles, and travels of that journey. After due time is spent on the journey, the song will reach its goal and return as if its retreat to the woods to explore the inner meaning of life, the universe, and everything is complete and now the world needs to hear about the findings. "Annihilate Everything That Exists" is another track that exhibits this theme quite well. The middle section has a flute rambling along, trying to find its way among the other craziness that the album has created. It rambles on to different, interesting places along the path, but it still has the one goal in mind. When it stumbles upon this goal, a great celebration ensues and much partying prevails. Then it returns to tell us about it.

The instrumentation is something that helps add the robust nature to this music. There is a glockenspiel, trombone, sax, guitar, violin, EWI, cello, laptop, keys, etc, etc, etc. The textures that are produced by mixing all of these elements create an album that is a delectable treat for the aural palate, as it mixes good old post-rock elements with, oh, I don’t know, accordion. It produces a richness that can be lost in traditional post-rock instrumentation (isn’t it interesting that post-rock now has a ‘traditional instrumentation’?)

This album is not without faults, although most, if not all are merely tech type problems that this audio geek can’t help but notice, but since they are irrelevant to the overall enjoyment of the album, they won't detract to much from the experience. Beast, Please Be Still has the potential to blow the socks off quite a few listeners in the years to come, especially if they keep up the amazing compositions.

-Greg Norte