The Unperson, Cosmic Sermonettes EP

The Unperson, Cosmic Sermonettes EP (2019)

Cosmic Sermonettes is a compact collection of melancholy outsider pop, DIY and unpolished, suffused with resignation and nostalgia that finds the sublime in the everyday. Possible reference points would include the dreampop of the perennially underrated Pram, Grouper’s reverb-shrouded sounds, and the quotidian content of Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor comics. Opening track, “House," starts proceedings, a Casio-dub dirge with half-mumbled wavering singing low in the mix. Other tracks make effective use of twinkling, arpeggiating keyboards and muffled drum beats. “I Won’t Grow Old Without You” is structured round a plucked guitar pattern and the incantatory repetition of the title. Layers are slowly added turning the song into a minor key epic that is intoxicatingly affecting and over far too quickly. These tracks are ambient in a literal sense of the term; deriving from, and soundtracking, a (domestic) space. The final piece, “Lasting is the Pine,” is a glorious coda and worth the price of admission alone. It's the only track that (only just) breaches the five-minute mark and as far as I’m concerned could have gone on for another half-an-hour. Plangent woodwind prefaces a field recording of birds chirping while keys provide a subdued drone-bed. A spoken voice sample with a pronounced Scottish burr locates us in isolated Highland forests, going on to playfully interview a ranger’s wife and son. There’s an understated undercurrent of ambivalence as the forest seems everlasting whilst changing due to man-made intervention. The Unperson’s boffinish online persona reveals a fascination with modular synths and a sideline in sample-packs that is entirely in keeping with Cosmic Sermonettes.