The White Birch
Star Is Just A Sun

They are named after a Codeine album. This alone should compel you to seek them out.

After a good but somewhat confused and undecided debut ("People Now Human Beings"), the Norwegian White Birch release their absolute masterpiece, an underrated gem that marked their consecration: "Star Is Just A Sun".

It was released in 2002 but carries with it (and treasures) the predominantly nineties lesson taught by those who made their fortune praising slowness (I believe it's unnecessary to name them, but the initials are Low, Red House Painters, and, indeed, Codeine).

Slow-core companion of life, dream-pop mon amour.

It's not absurd to find traces of the Slowdiveian passage or atmospheres of Paradisiacal memory among the grooves, yet going further, drawing a perfect landscape steeped in solitary melancholy and sadness.

Suspended in mid-air, in an imaginary place made of cold and icy expanses, with a cloudy sky and faint light, rendering everything uniformly gray.

A gray without any shade, the most apathetic gray that exists.

More than a tribute to slowness, a tribute to sadness and the darkest feelings a human can experience. Moving through rarefied dimensions, of which "Breathe" is a fitting example (one of the most desolate tracks the human mind could conceive), and others more tangible: "Beauty King", the only track that almost approaches an up-tempo amidst many ultra-slow tempos (it almost breathes like in "San Geronimo" by Red House Painters as for the ether), splits the work in half, serving as a perfect watershed for the atmosphere felt within it. One half, the first, composed of mid-air melodies; the other, the second, which reaches to touch the ground with a finger (or rather, ice). But, despite this, at moments it seems they do not want to decide where to reside at all, creating continuous ups and downs (the one-two of "Donau Movies"-"Glow").

In closing, however, "Atlantis" sweeps everything else away: the ethereal melody that would like to transport us to a dreamlike dimension, the voice that, however, keeps us anchored to this reality.

It's up to us to decide whether to go, or stay...