[rating=4.00]
With the release of their debut album, Trading Daylight for Twilight, the Los Angeles-based quintet, Great Northern has created a unique brand of intimate modern pop music consisting of ethereal and expansive melodies. These melodies manage to have the elegant simplicity of softly sung lullabies and peaceful slumber. And perhaps because most of us consider the anthemic rock that made U2 a world-renowned entity a plus, it seems counterintuitive for expansive to be so disarmingly intimate. Certainly, in the age of prefabricated, music, Great Northern’s debut is an amazingly refreshing album.
The slight strains of string arrangements embedded in the chorus sections of several songs, including “Our Bleeding Hearts,” the eerily beautiful keyboard work of Matthias Schneeburger and the amazing ending of “Just A Dream” which creates the sensation of freefalling into water, make this debut a serious catch.