Any Colour You Like
This album is somewhat of an enigma. It manages to combine breathtaking beauty and solemnity, and yet manages to miss vital chords when really needed. In short, only Jesu or post-rock/metal followers will probably appreciate this album; such sentiments are not born of snobbery or elitism (heaven forbid), but rather that the forces which shape the subjective aspects of 'beauty' here are wide open to individual contestation. What all that nonsense means, is that Ascension is an intermittent album, a bipolar mash, a dualist work that swings between the dizzy heights of the upbeat 'Sedatives' and the crushing depths of 'Small Wonder'. Broderick's trademark production and dense layering is as dreamlike as ever, and the thick, bordering upon fuzzy drone is still there too. However, due to an unusual mix, things can be hit or miss. For example, the percussion sounds like it was recorded in a garden shed, and the vocals are hidden so far beneath the mix that all extraneous sounds wash over them with silencing waves of distortion. Now, I can see that the vocals were intentionally mixed low, giving them perhaps a forlorn, or weak vibe. This works surprisingly well on some tracks, giving them an almost Nick Drake fragility and atmosphere. However, they are too often lost beneath the monolithic layers of sound, making their comprehension an added difficulty and challenge. Mixing aside, the song writing is very one paced, and suitably depressing. The music is by no means crushing, but it does ooze melancholia, not in the forthright manner that many alternative artists attempt, but in a lyrically subtle and poetic way. While this doesn't save the album entire from the patchy recording, it pays to let the sound wash over you, rather than succumbing to the cynical and nit-picky ultra- clean Pro Tools user inside you.
When Broderick sings with a meek and atonal tone "only in dreams will we take flight" you can honestly feel his expression; it's just too bad Ascension seems to have been sabotaged by a patchy mix, for it contains some of the more tasteful and interesting music Jesu have created.
3.5 stars, could be rounded up to four, given the brilliance of a few movements.