Ought’s full-length debut, “More Than Any Other Day” was one of 2014’s best albums, and now the Montreal band has announced its sophomore effort, “Sun Coming Down”. The new, eight-song effort will see its release on September 18th on Constellation Records. The band has shared “Beautiful Blue Sky” as a preview to the album.
Drop a word like “existentialism” into a music review and you automatically seem pretentious . Perpetually optimistic, Montreal’s Ought always manage to lean into the void without falling, and this song could be skewed as a contemporary re-rendering of Camus’ seminal essay The Myth Of Sisyphus. On “Beautiful Blue Sky,” the exchange of pleasantries repeat like mantras and drizzle out of Tim Darcy’s mouth in a just-barely-understandable slur: “How’s your family? How’s your health been? How’s the church? How’s the job? Fancy seeing you here!” But the list of exchanges hiccups and flatlines when Darcy declares: “That’s all we have in the big, beautiful sky/ And I’m no longer afraid to die.” But his admission isn’t dejected; it’s liberating. Instead of worrying about what’s going to happen tomorrow, or the day after, this song finds comfort in the beautiful weather, the familiar site of condos, new developments hitting that big blue skyline and the reminder that spontaneity is always an apt challenge to the mundane. “I’m no longer afraid to dance tonight, because that’s all that I have left.” If you believe in something on-high capable of filling the void, that’s ideal.
The Fat Angel Sings 