The Invisible World – Color / Echo
Midwestern four piece alternative rockers The Invisible World formed in 2012 and their second EP release, Color / Echo, shows their distinctive talents in full effect. Despite the young age of this band, the members share common ties reaching back over fifteen years and manifested in various lineups.
In their guise as The Invisible World, the musicians have a clear artistic vision pursuing a dual guitar and vocal attack, an appealing degree of lyrical sophistication without lapsing into obscurity and self-indulgence, and a sharp instinct for creating intensely focused efforts that never waste listener’s time.
The title track starts Color / Echo off with appropriate ambition. Despite not running over four minutes in length, The Invisible World put their best foot forward with the first song. There’s a tremendous theatrical feeling to how the band structures the guitar work in such a compositional way – instead of asking the guitars to flare out with a variety of wild licks and fills, The Invisible World concentrate instead on weaving the guitar into a greater whole.
The rhythm section provides a solid foundation on the title song and the second track, Bellamy, but their tones couldn’t be more different. Bellamy is much more light hearted fare, overall, with pop overtones balanced into the gritty gravitas that the band can frequently bring to their work. Once again, however, there are zero virtuoso trips weighing down the song The Invisible World plays in a very unified way and have tightness reflective of their long-standing acquaintance.
The Way brings them back to the big screen ambitions heard in the title song, but The Invisible World elaborates on them much more here. This is, perhaps, the moment that the band comes closest to performed poetry, but the lyrical content is suggestive and leaves much to the listener’s imaginations. The song probably features the EP’s best vocal.
Joliet strengthens the EP’s balance coming where it does in the running order. The Invisible World establish themselves as a band with a great grasp of juxtaposing light and shadow – the airier, pop leanings of songs like this and the earlier Bellamy come from a much different place than songs like the title cut and The Way, but the opening four songs hang together with similar sonic and melodic signatures that help give the band a definite style – something that bands, like all artists, simply have or do not and something that can never be taught.
Brick by Brick is Color / Echo’s true surprise. It will be for some, at least, but a careful listening to what comes before certainly lays the groundwork for this song to fall into a neatly defined puzzle piece. The lyrical, but eminently accessible, guitar playing is matched well by the plaintive quality of the vocal.
Color / Echo is one of the year’s most interesting releases – an alternative rock EP that isn’t afraid to flex its muscles, but has equal courage for indulging its more melodic aspects.
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