NARROW HEAD - Moments Of Clarity - LP - Vinyl

LP - Black Vinyl. 

Solitude, melancholy, and revelation bleed into each other throughout Narrow Head's, Moments of Clarity, transporting the listener through a vast terrain of emotional spaces. Traversing the depths of towering, churning riffs, bouncing, lock-grooved rhythms, and crystalline, gorgeously constructed hooks, the Houston-based outft puts on a masterclass in the art of writing songs that match the pain, pleasure, and confusion of modern living. Each track is sentimental without being precious, heavy without unnecessary griminess, pop-forward without letting the listener off the hook easy: these songs ask for some form of hurt or desire to be paid back to them in return, some promise that the listener is putting equal skin into the game.

Moments of Clarity's title track lyrically evokes images of numbed psyches and deep loathing, yet all the while holds out a sense of forgiveness in not knowing how to get better, a sense of forgiveness in the fact that, "it's ok to say you want more." "Moments of Clarity" tunnels through a thick morass of sticky rhythms, eventually exposing a melody so triumphant and stadium- sized in its confdence that it almost seems to channel the ghosts of Oasis's Knebworth 1996.

The record's title came to vocalist/ guitarist Jacob Duarte in an ambient, almost haunting fashion. The months surrounding the release of Narrow Head's prior record, 12th House Rock, were marked by a series of personal losses and spiritual trials. Throughout the writing process of this most recent record, the turn of phrase "moments of clarity" appeared to materialize wherever Duarte looked in an almost serendipitous fashion. The notion of moments clarity seemed to coalesce as if it were a totem to the desire to keep on living, a counterweight to the self-infected damage and depravity that defned much of 12th House Rock's lyrics.

"The phrase created a space for me to refect upon my own life," Duarte admits, "since our last record I've had plenty of moments of realization like that... when you experience friends dying, you're forced to see life a little differently." Moments of Clarity refects this matured sense of purpose. Longtime Narrow Head fans will undoubtedly still recognize the band's signature marriage of brutality and grace, and many of the core themes of desolation, loss, and self-medication that the band established on their prior records Satisfaction (2016) and 12th House Rock (2020) continue to haunt the edges of Moments of Clarity.

All the same, Moments rises above the darkness with a sense of elegant repose. While not exactly optimistic in outlook, these songs simmer with a certain life afrming desire, a burning passion to transcend pure cynicism and selfdestruction, if only for even a few seconds.

Tracklist:

1. The Real
2. Moments Of Clarity
3. Sunday
4. Trepanation
5. Breakup Song
6. Fine Day
7. Caroline
8. The World
9. Gearhead
10. Flesh & Solitude