Critic's evaluation
Three years after the announcement of the self-titled EP, the gaucho group Transit In The Ryes resumes its studio activities and, after supplying its fan base with sporadic singles releases, releases After The Sun Collides, its new EP. The material is the first stage of a process that will be narrated over the course of three years in the form of two EPs and an album.
The eyes open into a kind of rocky, damp, and penumbra basement. A shallow beam of light suffocatingly illuminates the environment, which leaves the body sore due to its rough and irregular texture. The curiosity to know the origin of such a flash of light divides space with fear and insecurity, but it becomes stronger, leading the character into the unknown. Accompanied by a transcendental yet tense soundtrack provided by Henrik Karlholm's synthesizer, the song takes on a pacifying and stimulating air, whose enigmatic sense of well-being puts an end to the tension experienced by the lyrical protagonist as he discovers a crack that leads him to a blooming garden that gives him back his smile. Promoting the mixture of drama and comforting overcoming, Santi Madeira's piano, sometimes accompanied by the sonar of the hammond recreated by the synthesizer, accompanies the morbidly melancholic dance of Karlkholm's soft and bittersweet timbre in his relationship with mourning. It is here that Aftershock becomes evident as a dramatic product that narrates the overcoming of pain through a plot that romances death, just as Goethe did in his acclaimed work The Sufferings of Young Werther. Aftershock, as the name suggests, is a narrative of the effects of a shocking event on an individual's emotional balance.
The piano produces a quick, timid velvety sound that communicates an apparent immersion into a softer, swinging melodic field. Through the raw drums with a slightly accelerated cadence designed by Thomas Gomes, a more joyful movement builds up, something that is reinforced by the entrance of wind instruments such as trumpet and trombone, which puts a reviving freshness to the still under construction sonority. Mixing elements of ska with indie rock, The World's Not Taking really matures in a way that a swinging sonar prevails, an element that moves away, at least in the sonic field, the funereal energy offered in Aftershock. Interestingly, The World's Not Taking is the most accurate description of how those who find themselves lost feel when they realize that those around them don't, or don't want to, realize that they are in need of help. Dialoguing about the dichotomy of internal anguish and the normality of the eternal world, The World's Not Taking deceives by its infectious rhythm, for in truth it is a song that functions as a cry for help from someone whose conflicting emotions go unnoticed.
A touching, shy waltz promoted by the piano keys inserts comforting colors into a melancholic background. With melodic-dramatic energy similar to that of Olhos Vermelhos, single by Capital Inicial, it is almost like the sound of a father holding the still fragile hands of his son who, at great cost, tries to demonstrate his learning in the art of walking. With Madeira's velvety backing vocals as an ingredient to amplify the drama, What Do I Do Now? A painful longing. The fear of forgetting. What Do I Do Now?, unlike Aftershock, speaks of a mourning of the present. The mourning of oneself in the memory of the other.
A comforting melancholy, like the warmth of the comforter on a cold night, is pronounced in a way that brings happy memories of the sad-reflective sound aesthetic of many songs that marked the career of Charlie Brown Jr.. Contagious, soft, and with a body present thanks to the bulging phrases of André Silveira's bass, Take Your Time brings with it an acidity that makes it flirt, melodically, with post-punk. Graced by sound lines that recall the melody of Every Breathe You Take, single by The Police, Take Your Time is, curiously, the song with the most positive and conscious content of the whole After The Sun Collides, because it brings a lyric character aware of his condition, an insecure reality, full of the absence of self-confidence and self-worth. Still, what is interesting is the emotional strength of the speaker in recognizing such weaknesses and the firm stance towards self-care. Take Your Time is simply a song that tells the story of a character who manages to free himself from his own demons.
Bringing a quick mix between indie rock and new wave, the introduction infects the audience with its comforting, mellow softness. Of a numbing joy, the song deceives the listener to the point that the lyricism possesses an energy and message that is at odds with the sonic energy. Change is a track that speaks of guilt, of pain, of the regret of a suffered past. It is a description of a character who, in the purest interpretive cliché, cannot deal with the ghosts of the past, which takes him off his own axis of balance.
Rough waves are spotted near the surface. The guitar seems to represent some kind of padding or the voice of dammed feelings. When the lyrical character, with his mouth already open, is ready to let off steam, it is as if he himself were forced by an omnipresent being to take a medicine whose purpose is to calm his nerves. This is what the introduction describes only with sound, after all, it suffers an energetic breakdown when, from the distinctly angry roughness, the melody slips into the same sheet of melancholy. Mixing elements of a Coldplay-style britpop, The Fall (Symphony Of An Overdue Epiphany) is drenched in a moving, infectious drama that follows the character in his own emotional dissection and his shock at discovering that he is not the only one suffering and in need of help. On the other hand, the track is like a prayer in which the interlocutor speaks to a divine figure in search of answers to his laments. An answer that comes, in his vision, cold and insensitive by showing that he has no difference between the others, because they all feel, cry and suffer.
After The Sun Collides is a plot of textures, scents, and baroque landscapes that romanticizes suffering, the morbid. The mourning. It is a work that dissects melancholy in its many layers and shows how pain, anger, and hatred act in different ways on individuals of different psychic maturation.
The EP shows Transit In The Ryes' ability to speak not only of grief, but highlight, with rhythmic artistry that embodies even an Enlightenment landscape, that grief is not a small audience event. The group shows that all individuals, once they are embedded with emotions, are not free from the energetic ambivalence of their own minds.
The urge to get rid of one's own demons, the asking for help, the giving up on oneself, the fear of forgetting. The pain of longing. These are events unfolded with delicacy, sensitivity, and humanity during After The Sun Collides, an EP that transits between indie rock, new wave, britpop, post-punk and even ska with clear comfort.
To bring maximum authenticity and lyric-melodic synergy, Transit In The Ryes was mixed by Karlholm himself. As a member of the EP's rhythmic-creative body, musician and singer knew how to guide the instrumentation to a place where the essence of the work could be maintained to a point that it became even palpable. And that was a great act by Karlholm.
Closing out the technical scope of After The Sun Collides comes the cover art. Signed by Isadora Klein, it communicates mourning, but also manages to dialogue with overcoming. The shattering of an object to the ground is the ultimate vociferation of anger and hatred, an act of venting and extravasation at its highest pitch. Behold, the splinters of such an explosion assemble an invisible line of union that suggests the reconstruction of that object, now with a new form. And the perfect metaphor for rebirth, which is nothing more than the overcoming of pain.
Released on 09/22/2022 in an independent way, After The Sun Collides is the sound of baroque colliding with enlightenment. It is the relationship and the overcoming of grief. It is the self-understanding of the most visceral emotions of grief, anger, fear, and longing. The dawn is not always easy to experience, but it is the dawn that always brings the possibility of rebirth.
