Beau Navire
Lumens

This hurts. It hits and bruises you the way only the old Pg.99 or Orchid knew how to do. It's "Lumens" by Beau Navire. Kids from Oakland staging a sonic oppression with few glimpses to peek at and search for a moonbeam. Yes, because there's nothing solar about it. It's a continuous sinister and excruciating rollercoaster, straight from the Californian underground. The kind we really like, still raw and primal, yet so perfect. Even if in the director's cabin, you find someone like Jack Shirley (Comadre, Deafheaven), the impact is natural, zero retouches, only lots of accumulated anger over the years that feels the need to explode in all its despair.

It's a mighty chaos that takes over the claustrophobic guitars. They don't keep you waiting and scratch, enveloping you in a dissonant oblivion, where you can let go strengthless, with your energy absorbed by those screams spewed as if all exit routes were failures and all you have left is to break your vocal cords in search of help. You imagine them there doing a jam session with their neighbors Loma Prieta with the sole purpose of dazing you and letting the sharp bursts of screamo/emoviolence enter your body. Almost to incinerate you due to the stormy flow in the abrasive twenty minutes. There's passion and fiery impetus, you can feel it. In the folds of the sonic turmoil, the desolation of the melody emerges and cradles you just for the necessary moment to recover from the emotional confusion mounted. A false tranquilizer. Take that breath, reflect and then go, it's time to return to the wall of sound that sternly corners you. Even when you think the nightmare is over, it reappears. A terrible illusion. It's a collapse of which Beau Navire are both witnesses and protagonists, they have lost control, trying to get back on the right path, with the sweetly melancholy soul that wants to emerge at all costs, beyond the glimpses of frustration and violence. But that's how it goes. An (almost) uncontrollable and inexorable decline.

And that's it. "Lumens" comes and goes. With the fury of a tornado boiling within itself, seeking illumination that can find meaning in daily apathy. Beau Navire had already made themselves noticed with "Hours"; "Lumens" reaffirms the concepts and solidifies the status. Now, I'm not aware if the inspiration for the moniker comes from Baudelaire, but that poetic damnation, you can transfigure it into music and in this, Oakland's Beau Navire strikes and sinks, without compromise. It's up to you to face their shock wave.