Waterstrider - Nowhere Now (2015)

In a place between gauzy pop and blues-ridden indie, between the soul of Fyfe and the electronic wisps of Vaults arrives Oakland, California, five piece Waterstrider. In a melodic instant, the opening track’s buoyant synths transport you to a weightless place where a “White Light” illuminates the album’s way forward down a path of uplifting, infectious indie-rock. Pounding with tribal percussion and purposeful guitar plucks, “Redwood” continues the journey of glistening hooks rife with psychedelic guitar riffs, gravitated by Nate Salman’s euphoric falsetto.
The greatest surprise comes on “Just A Taste.” With its water-logged synths and euphoric symbols, Waterstrider creates a sonic expanse before flooding the gates with soothing, acid-washed beats that feel fated to soundtrack a scene straight out of Julie Taymor’s Across The Universe. It’s a moment of complete calm and perhaps an obvious way to savor that moment in love, and in the album, of revelation and resolution as everything is “turning around.” The album’s title track, taut with sharp and hastened melody and urgently delivered, instigate the greatest breath of pop on the album with a sublimely. addictive hook. By the album’s culmination on “Black Blood,” Waterstrider has reached an idyllic middle ground where the expanse of nature seamlessly flows into full-bodied electronics resulting in a gratifying outpour of emotion where you’ll find all the answers.