Echodrone - Bon Voyage (Review)

Ambient, San Francisco 4-piece, Echodrone, deliver some impressive sonic textures and captivating dynamics on their third studio full length, Bon Voyage. From opening track, ‘Under an Impressive Sky’, the tone is set for an outing which is at once subdued, yet rife with bubbling tension. Mellow, at-times bluesy guitar work and bien cuit drumming - alongside some pretty vocal melodies - help the tracks sparkle just enough to stand tall against their peers.

Echodrone have fine-tuned the formula of starting small and taking a track’s humble beginnings as far as they can possibly be stretched. In some ways, they avoid the shortcomings of influence Spiritualized by striking that illusive balance between elegant simplicity and monotony Jason Pierce himself wasn’t always able to find. Swirling ‘Hypnogogic’ builds from a tiny spark of a riff into a full, hair-raising assault on emotions, while ‘Cold Snap’ is the album’s stunning highpoint with its “So cold without you” refrain and male-female harmony. 

Clocking in at just 6 tracks and 35 minutes, Bon Voyage offers enough tricks to keep listeners engrossed, but by sprawling closer ‘Constant’, we’re left yearning for a different dynamic approach to the small-big trajectory path of virtually every track which precedes it. The Curve-esque drive of ‘Pure Nickel’, and delicate, near-acoustic stylings of ‘Infinite Arms’ show two different sides to the band which could easily have been explored on a more comprehensive set of songs. Nonetheless, Bon Voyage is the pleasant sound of a now-experienced band sticking to what they know best and doing a damn good job of it.

Bon Voyage is out June 26.