ALBUM REVIEW: A Cave In Bloom - Mirrors
“An emotional instrumental is woven into the story, adding to the perfect storm we are placed in the center of.”
Ahead of A Cave In Bloom’s June 8 Super Dark Monday show at Desperate Annie’s in Saratoga, I took a dive into their latest release, Mirrors.
A Cave In Bloom’s debut album transports listeners to a world where making friends with the darkness is the name of the game. This inherently gothic body of work sports a similar feeling of watching a scary movie with your hand in front of your eyes, but you can’t quite stop yourself from separating your fingers to peek through them for more.
“The Words” is a masterfully crafted introduction into this sphere. The song, which sits just under five minutes, has a slow burn build-up at its start. The fade into the meat of the track gives a Radiohead-esque vibe. An emotional instrumental is woven into the story, adding to the perfect storm we are placed in the center of.
The second track picks up the tempo, offering an impressive collaboration between the drums and a falsetto-ranged vocal. The style reminded me of “Anne Molly” by Incubus. Around the two-minute mark, we are thrown for a loop, and suddenly the vibe has switched in the utmost intriguing way.
“Dissipate” is a well-suited title for the third song on Mirrors. The regular world fades away in this one, and we are immersed in an otherworldly spirit. While it sports this we’ve-crash-landed-on-a-different-planet vibe, the track also somehow feels Cake-adjacent, with breakouts of synthesizing tones to push the storyline along.
Who doesn’t love a subtle album title mentioned within a record? A Cave In Bloom gives us just that in “Mirror Work.” This song feels like it was perfectly crafted to embody exactly what you think it would sound like to put the act of talking about mirrors into musical code. The nail is hit on the head even harder with the mention of the all-too-common feat of facing the person in the mirror and getting lost in your head. The only way to describe this eerie, yet bone-chillingly good, track is likening it to the turning point of a movie where the good guy turns bad, and suddenly his character arc is shapeshifting in the most jaw-dropping way.
The following song, “The Tower,” feels like a dark continuation of the previous one, because the plotline has thickened that much. The newfound villain is developing further, and we can’t help but try not to blink and miss his next move.
“On The Subject of Weather” struck me as the most brooding song on the album. The vocals are really injected into our souls in this one. A powerful chant is whispered throughout: “Removing, breathing, grieving, deceiving.” Track seven possesses a similar vibe, but here breaths are in a way used as lyrics of their own.
“Rust That Eats The Iron” is not only a killer song name, but the tune itself is immensely well done. While not as dark and ominous in its sound, the lyrics are still hard-hitting: “Look at you staring in the mirror / You can’t see what’s coming.” The vocal range in this track reminds me of Fontaines D.C. in a way. Those characteristics, paired with the fact that A Cave In Bloom is using science to get dark (the title suggests oxidation), make this a standout for me on the record.
As we get ready to head for home plate on the second-to-last song, we are brought on a journey that slows things down and really allows us to relish in the beauty of this handcrafted record. “Transistion” features a strong performance from the bass and slow-motion drum riffs that ebb and flow into powerful crescendos.
The final song on Mirrors plays its part well, in that it both sports an appropriate name (“The End”), and the qualities of it give finale vibes. The track feels like a recap of the album, without feeling repetitive, and still standing out as its own piece of art. To close things out, a static reverb mimics radio frequencies losing life. And the curtains are dropped.
Listen to Mirrors by A Cave In Bloom on streaming platforms or visit their Bandcamp page: acaveinbloom.bandcamp.com/album/mirrors.
