GEOGRAPHY
by BEDCHAMBER

It took 4 years to complete the long-awaited debut album for bedchamber, titled Geography. According to the interviews couple days ago, they promised that the album Geography would be different from Perennial EP and it can be seen from the two songs that they released earlier, “Out of Line” and “Ride”. Their song will give as much color as the colors in their iconic artwork with every song represent the region of the Geography itself. After listening to the song after song, we believe that Geography fulfilled our expectation, here are some our first impression of the songs in Geography.

“Falter” is intriguing opening track from bedchamber. It's a fast pace dream pop gem, the bass modestly maintains its foundation as the guitars provide a hypnotic sound while the drums shift and shuffle. Better yet, in a similar vein, is “Désolé, Du Soleil”, A slow burner. The lyrics and melody will easily stick in your mind but pleasantly so. A bit repetitive but one of a sprawling, jangly piece of laid-back pop track. In just under 3 minutes, bedchamber has achieved a quintessential dream pop song in “Geography”. The piano sound is the highlight of the song, while the choir and drum are two things that keep this song alive. The album isn’t all downtempo with the unexpected post-punk influenced track “Ride” started to kick in. This song feels like a movie. Flow calmly at first and continue to increase until it blown your mind away as it reaches the peak.

With relaxing music and repetition of questions in it, “Moon” is one proof of them that this album feels colorful with a touch of a synth sound in the middle of the song. Maybe Southeast Asian style soundscape is a way to describe “Tang Freres” an experimental song which become a transition between “Moon” and the next song, “Swells”, that has a powerful repetitive drum that forcing you to nod your head with jangly guitar melody which follows behind. An unexpected track come up again in “Waters”, because it’s the first time bedchamber using an acoustic guitar as an instrument, this slow-tempo song has a Porches-esque influence in it. Bedchamber isn’t slowing down as “Natural” became a perfect song to end the album. We all know that Ratta has a big influence in DIIV’s Oshin as you can hear it in the repetitive jangly guitar melody that collides with Abi’s. The song also had an excellent built-up at the end.

“Geography” is a proof that bedchamber has surpassed their teenage-angst phase into a mature one, it can be seen in the lyrics that they’re currently worrying about their mid-life crisis and in terms of music, “Geography” is a strong statement that they’re not stuck in Perennial era, they can explore more and more to fulfill their potential. It’s only February but “Geography is a strong contender for the “Album of the Year 2018” title.

Final Verdict: 3.75/5