EP Review: 'Cranebrook' - by Solkyri

Solkyri’s Cranebrook: A Haunting Tapestry of Post-Rock Elegy and Emotive Crescendos

Hailing from Sydney, Australia - are Solkyri - a self-described instrumental rock band who spend as much time playing with intense emotive post-rock and shoegaze as they do ambient melodies. They're a band that has followed the path that fellow Aussie bands like sleepmakeswaves and Laura have laid out for them. Though, while some may have made the sleepmakeswaves comparison in the past with records like Mount Pleasant or even Sad Boys Club, it's this latest release - Cranebrook - which boasts a welcome and dramatically polarising shift in their approach to what makes a Solkyri composition.

Whereever We End Up Next starts with a beautiful folk-drone introduction that basks in the glory of post-rock ambience. Roughly two minutes in, it gives us this stunning crescendo of post-rock typical riffs that echo through the ether, like a musical echo, to sunrise peering over a lush landscape. Sure, there's repetition in the movements, but with each transition and change in tempo you're transported to this majestic place. One where electric guitars, sombre acoustics, violin-sounding strings, and an ambient melody, converge one-another, creating what sounds like the echo of an ancient lullabye.

I Guess I'll Be Leaving Now is ethereal yet has this sense of dread and decay about it. A longing for a past that has withered and dried up. Which makes sense given the EP artwork of a delapidated house where the second story has collapsed and fallen in on itself. The piano line is particularly sorrowful, adding a complex layer to the guitar feedback that rings out throughout the whole track, leading up to a dutiful violin melody that'll break your heart. But the violin is really allowed to have its moment when the ensemble of effects and ambient dissonance fades out. Leaving us with a despondent violin and cello harmony which feels like the final moments at a funeral.

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Artwork of 'Cranebrook' EP by Solkyri

Autumn Mould ups the ante in the ideas department of what quiet ambient rock can and should look like as raw slides on the fret board meets a haunting cello meets a piano line, leaving this track feeling like it exists in its own timeline, as it echoes into the feedback-ladened and upbeat-drumming of 1804. The shortest track on the record, 'though probably the most powerful, when you look at how it sets up the remaining two tracks - You Coward (Shambles II) and Where the Quiet Can Hide.  

With You Coward (Shambles II) starting out as a subtle what if Tim Hecker and Godspeed! You Black Emperor collaborated before, again, circling back to the pristine and angelic-like qualities in I Guess You'll Be Leaving Now. Which creates this cohesiveness, rarely felt in modern day rock, more so equated with classical music.

Where the Quiet Can Hide is Mogwai coded in its moody approach to summarising the preceding five tracks and leaving an impactful overture. With a steady drum beat that gives me nostalgia for Atomic or Kin-era Mogwai. Before it fades out into the abyss.

I think that, talking broadly for a minute here, that EPs are largely forgotten about or seen as the "between" period for many bands out there. A means for bands to try out new material or road-test transitioning to a new style but Cranebrook summons forth a veritable tidal wave of sadness, longing and joy. A schadenfreude of a record. Would I have liked something a bit more upbeat? Sure, who wouldn't? But that shouldn't take away from what Solkyri have achieved here.

I'm giving this a 9/10.

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