(Music) Soft Light Masquerade: "The Last of Our Lost Earth"

Soft Light Masquerade's debut album, "The Last of Our Lost Earth," is a haunting collapse into hopelessness and a struggle to gather what remains and arise. As mysterious as it sounds, the album is surprisingly striaghtforward, musically, though thematically challenging. With low production quality and often repetitive compositions, the album fails to claim a permanent spot in a CD Player. Despite these drawbacks, however, "The Last of Our Lost Earth" manages to remain a strong album, largely due to its honesty and atmosphere.

The lead-off track, "Blessed Silence," sets the tone for the spiritual battle that will undoubtedly ensue later in the album. Josiah Snow painfully wallows, "We salt the ground with our tears pouring down and we say that You know what You're doing," painting an image of doubt and regret that is echoed throughout the journey of the album. The album then flows in a "stream-of-concsiousness" manner through trials, memories, loss, and doubt, eventually erupting with "Last Rites," a near 6-minute sermon that serves as the turning point of the album. Throughout the course of the sermon, the tone gets darker, more intense, but with the realization of a sacrifice comes the evaporation of these tones as they are replaced with hope and joy, depicted quite cheerfully in "Lift." The album then finishes on the same note with "The Dividing Line," acknowledging that life is a collection of choices and that our fate is ultimately decided by them. Snow ponders, "When we come to the middle of a great divide will we see our ending? Will we take our stand or fallin in line? Will we stop pretending?" Indeed, despite the overwhelming tone of the album, Snow chooses to overcome his demons and live a hopeful existence.

The themes are there. The story is there. However, "The Last of Our Lost Earth" is unlikely to have a lasting effect on the average listener. A large reason for this is the production quality. The vocals, though haunting and well performed, are recorded at horrible quality. Additionally, many of the songs rely soley on a 4-bar chord structure that loops throughout the song. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage to the artist. The 4-bar loop helps the songs to build and become more lush and atmospheric as they progress. However, the loop is also very repetitive to someone who is primarily composition-focused. It is hard to judge someone on musical talent, when it is clear that musical creativity is the real issue with this album.

Undoubtedly, "The Last of Our Lost Earth" is an album filled with ups and downs. Quite literally, it is an album just as moody (if not more) than its creator. Despite it's many shortcomings, the album is unquestionably honest and brilliantly written from start to finish. Because of that, it simply cannot be overlooked or disregarded as a silly album crafted by a blogger named Cale.

Recommended for fans of M83, Sufjan Stevens, and anyone looking to sign an up-and-coming musical sensation.

Key Tracks:
1. "Blessed Silence"
2. "Our Sweetest of Tragedies"
3. "The Gray"
4. "The Dividing Line"

3 out of 5 Stars