Tracklisting:

Restorations – Nonbeliever
Goshen Electric Co. – The Grey Tower
Horse Culture – Follow
Yowler – Where Is My Light?
Desert Liminal – Gauze Cave
Anamon – In 3
Adeline Hotel – Lightning
Lea Thomas – Upstream
Scott Orr – No Phone
Advance Base – Christmas in Nightmare City
Blue Wilson – Golden Eyes
The Sofas – Nothing Major
Lazy Legs – Nosebleed
All Boy/All Girl – Bomb
Strange Ranger – New Hair
Elly Swope – Idea
Dweller – Running
Will Henriksen – Halo
Knuckle Pups – Bottom Baby
Ian Wayne – Guessing
Massage – Crying Out Loud
Recluse Raccoon – Mother America
Interbellum – Ink
Marc Ferrino – Like a Spark
Katie Kuffel – As the Crow Flies
Emily Brown – Sometimes
KASHKA – Holding Steady
Philippe Bronchtein – Me and the Moon
Spencer Segelov – Sacred Songs
Annie Dressner – Fades Away
Belaver – Grave Robber
Of The Valley – Ride Alone
Hour – Give thanks in a special way

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It’s the first Restorations record since 2014, and despite shades of triumphant comeback, the album is built on unstable foundations. Yes these are wide-screen anthems, packed with more guitar than you could ever wish for, but true carefree abandon is in short supply. Uncertainty and struggle is ever present across the seven songs, drawn from matters intensely personal and and globally political. LP5000 is blue collar rock for the Millennial age, full of anger and weariness and a kind of furious helplessness that has become all too familiar for many. As Matt Cohen puts it in the bio:

It’s a record about displacement. It’s about feeling complacent and coming to the sudden realization that maybe things aren’t as solid as they’d seemed—in politics, in personal relationships […] about knowing now that if you don’t constantly work 24/7 to keep things together, they can easily fall apart.

From the driven opener ‘St.’, Restorations show a commitment to heartland rock & roll with added punk snarl. Lead Jon Loudoun uses his gravelly vocals to full effect, angry but not (yet) nihilistic, ready to fight. “I’ll tell you what you already know,” he sings, positioning community and cooperation as the last hope in a fractured land of individuals. “You can’t do this all on your own.”

‘Nonbeliever’ has an almost Welcome To the Night Sky-era Wintersleep vibe, a spacious indie rocker where the intensity seems like bittersweet nostalgia, a longing for a time where things seemed as simple as holding a belief and working hard toward it. But it’s clear things are different now (“Got a partner for starters,” Loudoun sings, “and a kid on the way”), and the youthful ideas of protest and idealism feel thin and wispy, dreams eroded into mirages by the very culture that encouraged them, certainty now just another word for naivety.

Marked by a sense of dislocation and rootlessness, ‘Remains’ is a strangely sprightly lament for homes lost to gentrification and nomadic lives spent searching for somewhere to call home. “And now you can’t afford to live in the town you were born in,” Loudoun sings, “When they ask you where you’re from, you tell them the truth/You don’t know, and who does anymore?”

“Mind versus hunger, they taught you to sell
Oh no
And now you can’t afford to live in the town you were born in
When they ask you where you’re from, you tell them the truth:
You don’t know, and who does anymore?”

‘Melt’ present the dread of the cultural moment, where entropy begins to feel like its own order, chaos as the new stable state. Living in such a way presents anxiety as the prevalent emotion, the itching sense that anything could happen but nothing be changed, our autonomy whittled down to a toothless ‘refresh’ button and self-imposed ignorance. Racing with feeling, ‘The Red Door’ paints a similar picture, instability pushed by an encroaching system, while ‘Caretaker’ grounds the record in the personal once more. This follows through to closing track ‘Eye’, a poignant finale that dials back the guitars in favour of a crackling, pulsing beat, before swinging open into one last blast of cathartic noise.

LP5000 is an album that’s unafraid to place itself in history. Very much of its time, it’s restless with frustration and the needling shadow of despair, all the while grappling to keep its head above the water, to try to find hope in small things. Having said that, no contemporary figures are mentioned by name, and LP5000 is something of a political album without mention of politics. But it doesn’t take a genius to figure out who Loudoun is referring to on ‘Eye’. “As we’re halfway over the bridge,” he sings, “you’re taking a sip of your coffee / glance at your phone and mumble ‘hope he dies.’ Yeah,” Loudoun agrees. “I hope he dies too.”

The sentiment is symbolic of the album as a whole. Vehement beliefs are held yet never allowed to trigger action, the system draining the will and ability of anyone who might wish to make their ideas physical. There’s no base to build from, no home in which to rest and recuperate. Heroic opposition is in short supply. In this way, Restorations present a grim milieu—a situation not hopeless, but one of nothing beyond hope—where wishes can be uttered but never heard, and the flat, hard passage of time might be the only solution.

LP5000 is out now via Tiny Engines and you can get it from the webstore or Bandcamp page.

Album artwork by Drew Millward

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