Review: Odesza – In Return
My first exposure to Seattle-born electronic music duo Odesza came less than two short months ago when they played the main stage of the 2014 Capitol Hill Block Party, and was thoroughly entertained by what I had stumbled upon. I was smitten by the very pretty textured and busy sound that the group had to offer that was a pretty enjoyable cross between Tycho and Flying Lotus-esque beat-driven electronic music and mainstream EDC-ready electronic dance music, and their sonic dynamic worked especially well in a live packed-crowd environment, especially compared to fellow “future beats” producer XXYYXX, whom performed for the same crowd a couple of days later. After seeing them, I decided to check out their music on tape, and was torn on the group’s studio releases.
2012’s Summer’s Gone marked the band’s first full-length release. It was an album jam-packed with lots of pleasant-on-the-ears chillwave beats and some very impressively-layered synth work, but much like Tycho’s Dive which came out the year before, the LP didn’t have a whole lot in the way of variation and really gripping tracks to really warrant listening to the album repeated times. Despite this, the duo showed off a lot of talent and potential in their sound-craft, and this potential was explored even further on the My Friends Never Die EP that the group released the following year, which was an improvement on the variation side of things, making use of focal vocal sampling, as well as certain tracks being much more abrasive and bass-heavy, which, at least in my opinion, made the group’s sound feel richer and more distinct. After this very promising EP was dropped, Odesza came through just a handful of days ago with In Return, which is easily the group’s most refined and lovable release to date.
If you’re an Odesza fan that’s been following them since they first put out Summer’s Gone, just looking at the track listing for In Return may be a bit jarring. Out of the 13 tracks presented on this LP, only 5 are without any featured contributors, where it’s just Odesza working their magic laissez-faire. The most common form of contribution from outside musicians comes with vocal guests that have key roles in these songs’ dynamics, whether those vocals are chopped and screwed or straight-facedly delivered, like on “White Lies” and “All We Need”, the latter of which features singing from the Portland R&B act Shy Girls. It’s the same shift in direction that Baths took going from Cerulean to Obsidian. However, while I found Obsidian to be less compelling because of its emphasis on vocals, the guests brought on to Odesza’s latest LP compliment their sound with such majesty that it’s hard to deny.
On the instrumental front, In Return shows Odesza at their most varied and structurally sound. This welcome and necessary shift in instrumentation was hinted at on My Friends Never Die with its better tracks including the title track and the excellent “Without You”, but Odesza really ups the ante in this respect on their new LP. While My Friends Never Die experimented with more in-your-face sub-bass and more radio-friendly EDM tropes, In Return is the group’s most diverse and impressive effort to date, with some tracks off the LP seeming to take influence from trap music, as well as microhouse with the song “Sundara” and PBR&B with “Echoes”. While on the surface most tracks off In Return use the same structural skeleton they’ve been using since Summer’s Gone, what they build onto this familiar formula makes the band feel more distinct and sonically-proficient with how many styles they can tackle with ease.
A good representative of the LP at large is the track “Say My Name”, which was released as a single before this LP. The track is this monstrously-infectious larger-than-life song with some very poppy synth and bass lines, and features prominent guest vocals from up-and-comer Zyra, whose very tender and emotive voice really puts this track over the top for me. It’s catchy, sugary and pretty accessible from every angle, but the instrumental side of things does much to make the track still feel like Odesza’s and not just from any electronic music group. Zyra shows up again towards the end of the album on “It’s Only”, which may very well be my favourite track on In Return. The two artists go together perfectly, and I really hope these two tracks aren’t the end of these two collaborating.
The songs that don’t feature any additional musicians are good too, though most of these tracks feel the least progressive in regards to Odesza’s past material, for the most part. Tracks like “Kusanagi” and “Kyra” just feel like cuts off of Summer’s Gone, without much creativity or nuance to their name, save for the preadolescent group vocals on the backend of the former. The track that starts In Return off “Always This Late” is a warm opener with a snappy beat and solid synths, but compared to subsequent one-two punch “Say My Name” and my favourite instrumental track on the album “Bloom”, which is this electro house-esque banger with an astonishing seemingly trap-influenced beat that’s thicker than Jayson Greene, the opener just feels obsolete. None of these songs are particularly bad, though, and any average Odesza fan will probably be glad they kept some tracks in this more innocuous style around.
If you’re looking for an album that’s full of masterfully-crafted and upbeat electronic beat music that you can both zone out to and dance to, In Return is sure to satiate your craving. Track after track, Odesza deliver accessible and memorable electronic music that’s as technically-proficient as it is catchy, leading to a thirteen-track LP that can be enjoyed by both high-brow electronic music snobs and casual fans of this style alike. I feel confident in saying that In Return is Odesza’s best release, and I strongly recommend you buy it. And no, those aren’t just “White Lies”.
Your friend,
Jess Casebeer
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