Album Review: Fourteen Nights At Sea - Minor Light

Fourteen Nights At Sea don't screw around. Where most post-rock bands get bogged down with lengthy build-ups, the Melbourne outfit open their third full-length with one of their strongest offerings to date in Teeth Marks. It begins with a thunderclap of exultant noise — all fiery guitars and tectonic shifts of doomy rhythmic progressions, at once beautiful and foreboding. The storm recedes so slowly that the fade into the more subdued second track Them Colonies is hardly noticeable, but the overarching theme is clear: these songs are epic, imbued with such emotional weight that the only words that do justice come from the language of landscape and natural disaster.

The title track and mid-point drops the guitars for five minutes of oceanic ambience, with pulsating synths sounding like whale songs in utero. But the finest moment on Minor Light, and indeed one of the best parts of this band's discography, is the nine-and-a-half minute closing track, Chiltern Justice. It's a classic, cinematic post-rock number, built on the usual standards — the slow beat, the tense build, the waves of cascading tremolo guitars and a rousing crescendo — but it's executed to perfection, every element perfectly placed for the most poignant emotional impact.

Fourteen Nights At Sea might not be redefining their genre, but they're breathing new life into a style mired by repetitive tropes and imitators. With Minor Light, FNAS put themselves in the same conversation as international heavyweights like This Will Destroy You and Explosions In The Sky. It's one of the finest post-rock records in recent memory.