There is something magical in the display and rendering of nostalgia. The Dying Fall’s LP, Driftwood, channels nostalgia from every pore and every crevasse. The album plays as a myriad of send offs: homages to lost loves, depression, childhood, teenagers. Even the overall background sound of the album sounds old. The Dying Falls create a unique, but very familiar underground sound. The title track “Youth Goes Bad,” plays like a dusty old Talking Heads album cut. Throughout Driftwood, there is a strong underground presence very similar to the kind shown in the eighties. Echoes of Sonic Youth and The Pixies are spread across this album, “Old Prisoner’s Song” in particular seems to have crawled right out of 1987.
There are several songs that feel unique simply to The Dying Falls. “The Sun Shines For Everyone (But Not For Me),” sounds wholly original. The most spontaneous and loudest track (in terms of original identity) would be the album closer “Injury.” “Injury” clicks right off the bat, and the sound that comes off this song, needs to be duplicated in later efforts by The Dying Falls. Driftwood is an album of nostalgic and underground charm.–Casey Lowrey