Baleen

Most of us have never seen a whale, nor will we ever. And yet somehow, because of cultural information, legend, or maybe just the remarkable madness of Herman Melville, we can all picture them; we can see them soaring up, salt water spraying from their slick bodies, cascading down into something like the absolute purity of magic.

It is difficult to imagine a more apt music for this image than the band Baleen, who somehow occupy two worlds at the same time, much like the mythical, mystical beast of the sea. Baleen has all of the wondrous roiling fuzz and wall of distortion that brings to mind our favourite shoegaze bands over the last decades, but they manage to bring more joy to the music than seems possible. Theirs is the sound of soaring.