Grails : Miracle Music
Last I checked in with Grails, they had just released their then-newest record Anches En Maat. Where previous records of theirs like Doomsdayer’s Holiday and the six volumes of Black Tar Prophecies showed a band only just beginning to break loose from some of the heavy music foundations the players came from as they moved toward more psychedelic and rich sound fields, Anches felt like the first fully formed record theirs that fully cemented their identity. Well, that’s not quite true: Chalice Hymnal, its immediate predecessor, had assembled all the pieces into one place and showed great tantalizing promise. So it was with reasonable excitement that I waited for their follow up on this arc.
Miracle Music continues this upward climb capably, being their most sensuous and luxurious record to date. The previously assembled elements of new age, ambient jazz, neoclassical and choral music plus the de rigeur psychedelia found on their previous two records here flows outward in a seamless whole. They’ve become quite good at making these all-encompassing sound fields, filled with melody and texture and drama, where you are quite content to not follow a song as much as allow a sound-world to be built around you. Those of us with synesthesia sometimes struggle to articulate certain aspects of music that feel abundantly obvious to us: how do I convey the way those later Talk Talk records are a clear and beautiful white flecked with blue and silver? Records like Miracle Music do that work for us. With headphones or a good sound system at adequate volume, this album bursts into living portrait like a roving camera eye.
The press materials for the record cite industrial music, but the only connection I can see there to this final result is in the intensity and richness of the holistic image of these pieces. This is something most pop fails at except at the highest levels of composition, seeing beyond just the melody or isolated instruments to a piece that not only conveys drama and enormity/intimacy but does so seamlessly across all elements. Rock and especially alternative music tends to fair better in this regard, as does much of modern hip-hop and R&B, being cognizant of the total experience of a piece rather than just its hook. But industrial has always been a cut above, being driven almost singularly by this sentiment, wielding the raw power of its extremity precisely in how it might cut or complete existing sonic elements. That same sense of totality is clear in this music; each flute or string pad or singing guitar emerges from a living organic bed of sound, feels like the precise brushstroke needed.
Miracle Music as a result becomes a keen example of how different genres can train attentive musicians and composers to think more richly about sound and its design in general. It’s not just the notes these instruments play; everything from their recording to their effects to their mix brings them into a lush and continuous whole. In the closing track, a choir gives way to a single trumpet, then strings, then reeds, then keening soprano. Each addition feels natural and obvious as it is enfolded in existing sound. It is the sea and cliffs, clouds and whales, limbs emerging from foliage. The group is ready for a grand and ambitious statement following this record. But if they simply stay in this beautiful terrain, that’s OK too.
Label: Temporary Residence
Year: 2025
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Grails : Miracle Music
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