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In the category of music that explores the dynamics of a fractured relationship, it’s hard to imagine a project that puts the observational equipment as close to the source as The Rosebuds’ latest album.  “Loud Planes Fly Low” finds founding members and former wedded couple Ivan Howard and Kelly Crisp navigating this sea of emotional upheaval with the sedated detachment that comes with over-exposure to high stress.   As their first project since divorcing in 2009, it’s an attempt to simultaneously make sense of the breakup as well as form the basis for a continued (non-romantic) relationship.

The album tries on a number of different styles and arrangements as it progresses, from the dream-shuffle of the county/western influenced “Go Ahead” to the stripped down disco of “Come Visit me” to the psychedelic break beat that erupts in the second half of “A Song.”  Throughout the changing formats, the emotional core remains intact, injecting each track with a sticky sweet narcotic that lifts the body and deadens the nerves, intoxicating each style it attempts to imitate.  Tempos are slow, arrangements are top-heavy with strings and ambience, and grooves are softened by a slight smudge of a loosened snare.  Vocals are beautiful, clear and free of affectation.  The lyrics have the stuff of meaning but are obscurely configured – raw emotion drawn deep into the lungs and exhaled as a dreamy cloud of subjective associations.  (“Cover Ears” contains the title of the album but doesn’t necessarily make its meaning clear:  ‘Cover ears, loud planes fly low; sound won’t hurt on its own.’)

In a feat of skillful album design, the closing track “Worthwhile” introduces a ray of hope to a seemingly irredeemable situation that casts back onto the previous tracks, illuminating a particular beauty about their deteriorated relationship that had been muted under the layers of melancholy.  Howard begins a line ‘If we could go on wishing all our lives, I would go on wishing we did it right,’ and finishes it ‘I just want to make it all worthwhile.’  Two mindsets are depicted (dreaming/wishing for a different past vs. making the past worthwhile,) and he wants the healthier of the two.  This isn’t the first recognition that their relationship may have been built on a flawed mindset, in “The Woods” – the one instance of unfiltered angst on the record – Howard admits that the limited world they inhabited as a couple was coming into conflict with the act of living itself:   ‘The smallness is the comfort between us, but experience makes us mean.’

The lyrics to “Worthwhile” reveal only a desire to change perspective.  But the song’s title, along with the descending melodic interlude in the guitar that clearly rings with closure and good cheer, these suggest that the bulk of the change has already taken place.  It makes the album as a whole a little less sad to think that those involved in the heartbreak look at the experience as, at the very least, worthwhile.

Musically, “Low Planes Fly Low” isn’t breaking any new ground.  In fact, perhaps because of the way they had to spread out their core sound in order to embrace the number of styles the album contains, the non-newness occasionally dissolves into that broad ocean of indie-pop typicality.   But this shortcoming is well overshadowed by the record’s brilliant design, stellar execution, and emotional complexity.