Typhoon’s “Offerings” was released way back in January, and nearly 12 months later, it is still one of the year’s finest records. Musically and lyrically, Offerings carries a heft that very few albums can do without feeling overwhelming. In making the record, Typhoon’s creative source Kyle Morton asked himself, “What does a person become if they don’t know where they came from? What is the essential quality of the person if you strip away all memory?”
The tracks on Offerings range from huge epics to spoken word to ambient journeys and many places in between. It’s impossible to go through the whole album and tell its story, and there’s no way a couple of paragraphs on this list will come close to doing it justice. However, there are some truly important tracks on it, such as the immense sound of “Rorschach”, the beautiful orchestration of “Empiricist”, and the unnerving hypnoticism of “Unusual”.
Offerings is an immersive, intense record that will define Typhoon’s career. It’s important, and it’s groundbreaking. They’ve broken out of a crowded indie folk scene and have truly created something to behold. In the process, they’ve told a story that no else can nor will do.
Typhoon’s full-length album, Offerings, out now on Roll Call Records
Typhoon is back with their fourth album, Offerings , which will also be their first album since 2013. The main man behind the band, Kyle Morton, has discussed how he’s interested in the loss of memory, both on the individual level and collectively as a society. “Rorschach,” the second track on the album, speaks to that theme (“How you gonna hold on to your memories?/ How you gonna hold on when you know that you can’t?”). Based on the track list, this album is sure to be a journey through the emotional phases of loss, with “Rorschach” marking a cathartic moment of frustration about the circumstances that you’ve been presented with.
“Rorschach” is off of Typhoon’s full-length album, Offerings, out now on Roll Call Records.
Typhoon‘s colossal and ambitious fourth LP Offerings is available everywhere . The album, which follows the journey of a man struggling to cope with the loss of his memories, has already garnered praise from NPR, Stereogum, and more for its unmatched lyricism and profound storytelling.
‘“Good lord this Typhoon album is brilliant…haven’t cried listening to a record since [Sufjan Stevens’].” Offerings is truly a wise and ruminative record.” – Bob Boilen, NPR
“The first compelling album of 2018” – Daily Mail (★★★★)
“Typhoon has succeeded in creating a profoundly human and poetic masterpiece on the edge of the concrete, which despite all its ambition remains multi-layered and cohesive at the same time (…) Rarely ever has forgetting been set to a better soundtrack and more appropriately staged than on this album. 9/10″ – Plattentests
“… one of the most ambitious, delicate, heartbreaking recordings ever.” – Vortex Magazine
“As early as we are into 2018 as we may be, Offerings already stands as a rare example of a band shooting for a terrifyingly ambitious album that not only holds up to that immense pressure, but exceeds expectations and succeeds on multiple levels, both grand and subtle. If you haven’t been paying attention to Typhoon already, it’s time to change that. 9/10”
It’s been over four years since Portland-based Typhoon released White Lighter, and in that time singer-songwriter Kyle Morton has been grappling with the idea of “losing it”—the struggles a person endures when battling a deteriorating brain. On the band’s fourth full-length, Offerings, Morton funnels his own fears through a fictional character who is losing both his mind and sense of self.
The record is split into four movements—”Floodplains,” “Flood,” “Reckoning,” and “Afterparty”—each one illustrating a phase of the the character’s journey, from his realization that something is wrong, and the long struggle that follows, to his acceptance of his fate, dreadful as it may be. The 11-piece folk-rock ensemble creates an eerie backdrop for Morton’s stories, full of delicately plucked guitars, screeching violins, and, on opener “Wake,” the faint sound of static, as Morton has a premonition: “Of all the things you’re about to lose, this will be the most painful.”
The record ebbs and flows, swinging from cacophonic sounds to joyous melodies, until arriving at calmness in the aptly titled closing track, “Sleep,” led by Morton’s forlorn vocals and a quietly strummed acoustic guitar.
Morton voices the doomed main character as he tries to navigate his condition—a situation complicated by the current political climate, which offers a compelling argument that the planet may need to be demolished before it can reset itself. The parallel between private and public chaos comes into full relief on “Rorschach,” which explores the age of information and collapse of meaning, which only adds to the narrator’s sense of disorientation and confusion.
Offeringsis a chilling journey through the workings of the inner mind, and though it’s not an easy listen, its intricacies gain greater depth on repeated listens.
Typhoon is an American indie rock band from Oregon. The band has eleven members. They have released four albums, two EPs, a split 7-inch record with Olympia-based band Lake, and have contributed to a number of compilations. The band’s fifth album Offerings is scheduled for release on January 12th, 2018. The band originated in Salem, Oregon in 2005 but is now based in Portland, Oregon. They are signed to the indie record label Roll Call Records.
Typhoon is back with their LP Offerings. There are currently two variants. A blood red 2xLP which looks to be gone soon (19 left on the webstore) and the other is an indie exclusive gold edition limited to 1400 copies verified through Rough Trade as a 2xLP. This record sounds monumental, so get your hands on it before it slips away. Enjoy!.
Typhoon’s Kyle Morton performs an acoustic, piano version of “Prosthetic Love”, off of their album White Lighter
It brings me great pleasure to announce our new record. It’s called Offerings and it is a seventy-minute exploration of memory and sacrifice in three movements, the first of which is available now for your immediate listening pleasure.
Without giving too much away. I wanted to share with you an email I wrote to our manager back in May. I had just sent him the final masters and he was asking the sensible question: What is it all about?
It’s a record from the perspective of a mind losing its memory at precisely the same time the world is willfully forgetting its history. The urgent question becomes: without casualty, without structures of meaning, without essential features of rational thought, is there anything that can save us from violence / oblivion?
With no past and no future, there is only suffocating, annihilating present, looping on and on ad infinitum (to me, one plausible definition of hell) and the best you can hope for is that somewhere in the void there exists some small, irreducible certainty—a fragment, a kernel, something—that you may have the good future to stumble upon before it’s all over.
You know, a boy/girl-meets-girl/boy-everyone-dies-in-botched-attempt-at-neo-pagan-sacrificial-ritual-on-global-scale kind of thing.
FLOODPLAINS Down in the floodplains waiting on a cure Blessed be the water may the water make us pure Forms will be unborn in the mirror within the mirror Rejoice now, Rejoice now The Reckoning is here.
WAKE Wake and I have been reborn. The tide concedes that homely shore and I am benighted. All my lines unlearned. Cry out will God (or somebody) please turn the light on. Restore me to that empty room—expands out like hot air balloons. A woman comes she brings me food. I shit the bed in solitude. My life one brief unbroken loop—goes round and round with nothing left to hold onto. But if there’s nothing, if there’s nothing, then what’s that song that keeps hounding me? In the still dark of the morning. Just one more cradle down the creek. Au revoir my little memories. Tell me: This is not your loss. This is your offering.
RORSCHACH Eyes on the screen. We have all the information now but what does it mean? Reason’s a tease. Drank up all that hemlock, here I am just reading the leaves. Left wondering: what happened to the life we lost, that got lost in the living? All this fiction makes me nervous, turns out it was blood spilled on the canvas we admired just like some Rorschach painting. The film in your brain—it edits to remember, keeps the figure in the frame. A sacrificial violence, all those passed over in silence then cast out with the blame. And I’m trying to stay sane—meanwhile, the river of forgetfulness starts spilling the banks. Caught in a lie and instead of fessing up we’d sooner just go out of our heads. I’ve been holding up my end when I should have doubled down on my own atom bomb shelter instead.
EMPIRICIST Empty room. Cast about for a familiar object. Because my body needs coordinates to move. In the dark. Range of motion shrivels all around me. All my nightmares I am slowly being cocooned. A single calf in the hecatomb. Crescent moon. Hollowed out of all my fabled insides. Occam shave me down to primal truth—return me to the womb. Mother pulled from father’s ribs, little baby in a crib, hands reaching up. Before the blinding light is split through the prism of your organs into color. All that being and nothingness, on the same möbius strip. Sleep and waking up. On the first day. Wipe the blank slate. And you join the banquet. Served up helpless on a plate. You find your land legs. And you learn to imitate. You’ll wear any feathers and hope that your efforts attract a mate. One day your children find you, locked in the bathroom, staring in horror at the reflection of your face. You say you’re sorry to the guests at your party. But you can’t help wonder, who is this person you celebrate? And so the light fades. It’s still your birthday. Blow out your past lives like they’re candles on the cake.
ALGERNON A woman leans in her chair. Holds her face close to mine. She’s curious, am I comfortable? Would I care to give it one more try? She holds the picture up while she studies my eyes. I’m trying hard to recall the routine, but I can’t and so I improvise. This one’s of my father. Wearing ladies clothes. I walked in on him once as a kid. Must have thought nobody else was home. It’s a lie and she knows. But there’s no other use. And anyway what you want and what you want to be are easily confused. The moment stretches on. Like the first day of school and I’ve answered wrong. Like a self-enclosed short-circuit goes around forever until it’s gone. A woman shrinks in her chair. She says the picture’s of you. I have no idea what she’s talking about but I nod my head as if I do. Look at there such a strong man. All the virtues of youth. You led a good life by every account. There were people who looked up to you. I say enough is enough. You have found me out. You have called my bluff. I don’t know anything about this stuff. I’m just tired and I’m waiting for my wife to pick me up. A woman slouched in her chair disrupts the silence to say. The part of you that I love is still in there even if it doesn’t know my name. The moment stretches on. Like the colonnade at the Parthenon. It’s an unmarked grave but somebody’s laid some flowers for Algernon.
Typhoon is an indie rock band from Portland, Oregon.
Floodplains – featuring the songs “Wake”, “Rorschach”, “Empiricist” and “Algernon” – is the first movement of Typhoon’s forthcoming full length album, Offerings. Offerings will be released on January 12th, 2018 on Roll Call Records.
The Fat Angel Sings 