Review: Joshua Hobbins
It’s been nearly a decade since Departure Songs tore our collective hearts out and rebuilt them with swelling crescendos and silence-as-instrument. That record cemented We Lost The Sea as a band capable of redefining what instrumental music could mean. Now, with A Single Flower, the Sydney post-rock collective return with their most emotionally resonant and compositionally daring album to date. A slow-burning elegy that explores grief, memory, and the aching beauty of what remains.
If They Had Hearts opens with a solemn guitar refrain that immediately sets the tone for A Single Flower; fragile, thoughtful, and deeply felt. That opening motif becomes the heart of the song, and the way it builds, with tremolo murmurs and a slow-burning drum swell, feels like a resting heartbeat gradually accelerating into something urgent, racing, then finally calming again. The piano-led outro subtly recalls the intro, tying the piece together in a full emotional arc. It’s a slow exhale, and it sets the stage perfectly.
A Dance with Death might contain some of my favourite drumming in recent memory. Alasdair Belling’s use of snare rolls to build tension is so tasteful, and the way the guitars weave around the rhythm section is masterful. It’s also a joy to hear Kieran Elliott’s bass right up front at the start. The interplay between bass and drums, something I saw firsthand at The Triffid last year, is locked in and powerful here. This whole track feels cinematic, like it could score 28 Years Later, sitting alongside John Murphy’s classic In the House – In a Heartbeat from 28 Days Later. The groove in the last two minutes is peak We Lost The Sea; thoughtful, dynamic, and executed with such care. It’s aural storytelling of the highest calibre.
Everything Here is Black and Blinding feels like being underwater with no way up, but it wants you to sit in that weight, to not look away. And it works. The mix here is absolutely immense. I felt this one more than I heard it – like floating in a sealed chamber of dense, hypnotic, cacophonous rhythm and atmosphere. There’s no escape from it, but you don’t want one either. It’s suffocating and beautiful.
Bloom (Murmurations at First Light) is my personal highlight. It shows just how good this band is at restraint. Again, it’s Al and Kieran who build the space – groove and feel balanced with strength and breath. Mathew Kelly shines here, his melodies are subtle, piercing, and never overplayed. The way the passages flow together is just so carefully crafted. It’s one of the most emotionally resonant tracks they’ve ever written. It wrecked me, but in the best way.
The Gloaming offers a brief ambient reprieve, but even that is haunted. It feels like a memory trying not to disappear. Decaying, echoing, and oddly intimate.
Then comes the colossus – Blood Will Have Blood. A 27-minute odyssey that showcases every facet of We Lost The Sea’s power. It drags. It drones. It crashes. It rebuilds. You feel every second, and then some. There are moments where it feels like you’re standing at the edge of something enormous; grief, time, the cosmos, with only sound to hold you steady. If you’ve ever lost something and tried to grow around the hole it left, this song knows. Movements shift between funeral doom-esque guitar passages, radiant melodic lines, trembling textures, and minimalist ambiance; low hums, barely-there melodies, and feedback. Mark Owen, Matt Harvey and Carl Whitbread have delivered some of the finest guitar work in the genre across their back catalogue and have really stepped it up a notch with their work on A Single Flower. We Lost The Sea aren’t just writing post-rock epics anymore. They’re dragging us through ruin and handing us the flowers they found in the wreckage.
Tim Carr’s mix on this record is sublime; everything is felt more than heard. It’s meticulous without ever feeling sterile. Every texture matters. Every silence is deafening. The space, the restraint, the emotional honesty, it’s all there. A Single Flower isn’t background music. It’s the kind of record you sit with. That sits with you. This is their most emotionally direct and sonically cohesive work to date – a masterclass in tension, space, and devastating beauty.
With this release, We Lost The Sea have firmly placed themselves among the elite, standing shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Russian Circles, MONO, and Mogwai. But they’re not imitating anyone. They’ve carved out a space entirely their own, and it doesn’t get much better than this.
We Lost The Sea – ‘A Single Flower’ is out July 4 via Bird’s Robe Records/dunk!records/
Pre-order the album now http://welostthesea.com
