ALBUM REVIEW: The Beautiful Fear – ONE

Filed Under: Album/EP, New York City — By: Elke Nominikat

“ONE”, the first installment of a two-part album by The Beautiful Fear hits glamglare’s motto spot-on: “…discover new music, revisit classics [..] and enjoy life through music”.
Musically, “ONE” takes its cues from rock classics, mainly 70s Pink Floyd but also other 70s super groups like Yes, Genesis, Tangerine Dream or Mike Oldfield come to mind. However, “ONE” is definitely a contemporary album. “Enjoy life through music” – absolutely, because each track on “ONE” is amazing, though not exactly ‘feel-good’-music. It is subtle, mellow and at times melancholic.

“ONE” is complex. It is a piece that draws one in and makes one listen to it as an ‘Album’. “The record is the ‘cine-manic’ sound of challenge and change”, offers Matthew Bannister who recorded and self produced the album with Carl Negin in Brooklyn, Miami Beach and Baltimore over the last five years. Good things take time. “ONE” opens the cine-manic journey with/in “1999” and continues through themes of depression “Rien”, abuse “Ambien” and “The Pillow Fight”, deceit “Dry Cleaned”, death “Retrospective”, internet dependency “Addictaclique” and relationship collapse “My Insatiable Won” and “Never Yesterday”.

Aside from the poetic narrative that flows through the album, it is being held together by Bannister’s beautiful vocals, smooth with a raspy edge yet also clear and powerful when desired.

In the end, I’m left wanting the second installment “TWO”, continuing the cine-manic journey in 2014, NOW without having to wait until 2017. Since listening to “ONE” on repeat and embracing it, I revisited some of the 70s masters I grew up with and finally (!) came to love Pink Floyd  – although quite a personal experience and takeaway, it is maybe the biggest compliment and ‘thank you’ I can give The Beautiful Fear and “ONE”.

---

Recently, I featured “Arduus Ad Solem” as Song Pick of the Day and invite you now to listen to another favorite, the appropriately infectious “Addictaclique”:

Get your copy of “ONE” on iTunes. Stream the album on Spotify or SoundCloud.

Give this video, featuring “Ambien and the Rockabye Zombie Puppet Show” and some pretty rad visuals, a try:

Follow The Beautiful Fear on Facebook, Twitter and/or Instagram.