Six Organs of Admittance

Six Organs have spent years in the Hexadic tangle, ambient sleep cycle, and electric flash of The Veiled Sea, but for Time Is Glass, Ben Chasny returns to the fogged shores that birthed the band’s early years. With a tangle of acoustics wound around hazed landscapes, Time Is Glass is both blissful and bleak. The album starts streaked with afternoon sun, but quickly descends into the wordless womb of “Hephaestus.” The storm is brief as the album settles into an overcast resolve that feels like coming home. The feeling is apt, as Ben himself returns to the area that served as starting point for Six Organs. Humbolt County is in the bones, strung through the strings, and humming faintly through the amps on Time Is Glass.

There’s a bittersweet sway that runs through the album, the kind of feeling that sits underneath the sternum when returning to familiar places. Somewhere between sigh and ache, the record allows Ben to inhabit old inklings with new perspectives. Scrubbed of some of the band’s early erosion the record sends Chasny’s psych-folk through the maze of mirrors — reflections of themes, circles on circles curling like smoke to the skies. The record is homesick even as it’s written from home. Is the body ever at rest? Is a place, familiar or foreign, ever truly ours? Is comfort the fight leaving or the fight won? The listener can feel each fret, each surge of electricity through the amps on the album. It’s as tactile as anything in Ben’s catalog. The effort in becomes the effort out, and Chasny sends us on the cycle of searching each time the record returns to the speakers.

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