How do you follow up a masterpiece? In the case of Mostly Autumn’s Sight of Day, it seems you don’t even try to capture the lightning in a bottle twice. And I don’t entirely know what to make of what they did put together.
First, a bit of background. I can’t talk about Sight of Day without talking about Dressed in Voices. Dressed in Voices came out in 2014, and, by my accounting, is not only the best of Mostly Autumn’s 12 albums by an immeasurable distance, it’s my personal favourite album of the current decade, and a strong contender for my all-time number one. It’s not perfect, but the intricate, depressing-yet-hopeful concept album about the victim of a mass shooting reflecting on their life weaves story and music together in a way that is accessible, deep, and moving all at once. (If you want an example, look up “The Last Day” and listen to the whole song uninterrupted.)
So naturally, I was looking forward to seeing what Mostly Autumn could come up with after three years of silence. Now, I should explain that Sight of Day isn’t even fully released yet — it officially comes out on April 7. But Mostly Autumn is a relatively unknown indie Celtic prog folk band (imagine Pink Floyd mixed with Enya), and that description should explain why they opt for an alternative retail method, selling 2,000 limited edition pre-orders that come out early and include an extra CD to fund the main release. That’s what I listened to, with high hopes for something even close to the level Dressed in Voices reached.
Sight of Day doesn’t break from Mostly Autumn’s recent trend of concept albums, but rather than the straightforward and heavy idea of Dressed in Voices or the silly, creepy fun of its preceding album, The Ghost Moon Orchestra, Sight of Day’s theme is… ambiguous. From my surface-level listening, I’m pretty sure the recently married couple behind much of the songwriting and vocals may have had a child, based on the album art and a lot of family / parental references in the lyrics. But there’s also something about time travel, a strong hint of struggling with depression, and some historical and fantasy references. Maybe they’re not all tied into one single concept, but enough clearly are — based on callbacks between songs — that it makes me suspect there’s a level of cohesion that is much harder to find than in their previous work.
Themes and band history aside, this is still a collection of songs, so let’s talk about those. It’s not Mostly Autumn’s best, but it’s not their worst. The title track, which runs over 14 minutes and opens the album, is excellent, memorable, and varied. But as soon as the second song, “Once Around the Sun” started, I worried this would be a heavier, more guitar-centric album, and I was right. I like heavy music, but it isn’t Mostly Autumn’s forte. Sight of Day also relies too heavily on the band’s male singer, Bryan Josh, and while he’s doing some of his better work, he doesn’t hold a candle to the voice of Olivia Sparnenn-Josh. Almost universally, the songs she sings are the album’s highlights, though even with her talent, I found a lot more songs that just blended together and bored me than I’d expected. There’s good music here, but I can’t listen to it in isolation — I can’t separate it from what I know these people are capable of.
And then there’s the song “Native Spirit.” It’s awkward, out of place, and I’m not even sure what it’s about, beyond glorifying vague stereotypes of “Indians” in the exact way you’d expect from an English band that, as far as I’m aware, had no First Nations people at all involved in it. The second half of the song is some of the musically best work on the album, but I was too surprised by the preceding lines, like: “Give me Indians, Indians, give me way of life, way of spirit / Love the Canada mountains, trees and bright moons that shine all around.” If anyone can explain what this song is supposed to mean and why it’s not problematic, please let me know.
Now, the strangest thing is that, after listening to the main 73-minute CD, I took a little break, wrote some mostly disappointed notes, and then moved on to the bonus, limited edition CD. And I was immediately flabbergasted. The first two songs are absolutely classic, excellent Mostly Autumn, and they explain what could be the seeds of an album plot more clearly than anything on the CD that will see a wide release. It’s like there was a coherent story constructed, but somewhere along the line they decided to add in some more songs, and push the extras to this spare CD. Those first two are followed by five more songs, which are a mix of experimental but successful and just plain superb.
I don’t understand this album. I don’t know what they were trying to say, I don’t know who thought “Native Souls” was a good song to write, much less release, and I have absolutely zero understanding of why anyone would possibly choose to include all 10 minutes of it — or several of the other songs — on the main CD that’s all most listeners will hear, while hiding legitimately amazing songs on the limited edition that only 2,000 people (and probably anyone who tries to find them online) will have.
It probably sounds like I hate Sight of Day; I don’t, I really don’t. It went straight onto my main playlist, and there are a lot of songs I’ll seek out and listen to more over the coming weeks. But if you haven’t heard of Mostly Autumn before, do yourself a favour and go buy Dressed in Voices. I promise it’s worth your time, and maybe a spike in sales will convince the band to return to the style they excel at.
Jeff was The Cascade's Editor in Chief for the latter half of 2022, having previously served as Digital Media Manager, Culture & Events Editor, and Opinion Editor. One time he held all three of those positions for a month, and he's not sure how he survived that. He started at The Cascade in 2016.
