(2022) Mild Orange – Looking for Space          


Review:
On their first two records, Mild Orange built a winsome little world of glassy guitar sounds, bright soulful vocals, and mesmeric dream pop textures. While their songs aren’t overly catchy, they offer a relaxed, sun-dappled appeal that has helped the New Zealand band pick up a widespread streaming audience. The growth between releases has been notable, though subtle, and on their third outing, they make yet another slight sonic shift. Looking for Space marks the first Mild Orange album to be recorded in a professional studio. The homemade bedroom production of their earlier outings allowed for a certain measure of creative freedom, but there is a different sense of freedom that comes from the expansion of sonic values. Recorded at six different studios across New Zealand’s north and south islands, the album brings into greater focus the intricate, interlocking guitars of Josh Mehrtens and Josh Reid, along with the nimble interplay of bassist Tom Kelk and drummer Jack Ferguson. Right out of the gate, the band offers up two invigorating tracks in “Colourise” and “F.E.A.R.,” a pair of songs as punchy as they are cinematic. Musically, Mild Orange have never sounded so muscular, though in a way their strain of brightly atmospheric dream pop feels relatively unchanged. They seem to work within a set of aesthetic parameters that prevents any great divergence, though that’s not necessarily a knock to their commitment or quality. Like their eponymous 2020 LP, Looking for Space suffers a bit from a sense of sameness, but by the time it concludes with the ethereally pulsing “Photographics,” they’ve created quite a pleasing environment.





Track Listing:
1.Colourise 03:37
2.F.E.A.R 03:44
3.The Time Of Our Lives (Extended) 05:01
4.This Kinda Day 04:34
5.Oh Yeah 03:58
6.What's Your Fire? (Extended) 05:52
7.Take A Moment (Interlude) 00:39
8.Aurora 04:40
9.Hollywood Dreams 05:31
10.Music. 05:40
11.Photographics 03:21


Media Report:
Genre: dream-pop, indie-pop
Country: New Zealand
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits


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