Lapse [LP]

Vinyl LP pressing. Idaho returns with it's first new album in more than 13 years. Emerging in the early 90s, often linked to the seminal bands of the influential slowcore movement pioneered by Low, Songs: Ohia, Codeine, and others, Idaho is uniquely distinguished by the ragged elegance of frontman Jeff Martin's powerful songcraft, the gentle angst of his poetry leading the airy, earthen synergy of his sonic desertscape. As ever, Lapse - which marks Idaho's first full-length release since 2011's You Were A Dick - is engraved with the painterly strains of four-string guitar feedback that has long been Idaho's signature, it's lush melancholia lavished by Martin with bittersweet delivery on ten heartrending, cinematic new songs, charged with the undying love of being a band. An album about relationships, and relationships based on music, Lapse serves as a snapshot of Idaho's quintessential ever-evolving sound, captured in newfound flux. Martin sees the album as "a harkening back to the beginnings of Idaho": less a return to form than a reclamation and a deep visitation with the muse that ignited more than three decades of exceptionally original, mysterious, canonical music. An open letter to all who have delighted in Idaho, Lapse is steeped in nostalgia without ever succumbing to it, rich with pure sonic and emotional accrual, a lightning strike destined to enrich the legacy of a singular - yet already enduring - band.