Album Review: Looking For Space

Mild Orange are back in New Zealand and back on the scene with their new album Looking For Space. Here is a breakdown of the key moments in the album.

Colourise introduces the album like the outro of a music festival. Picture: it’s the final set of the evening, it’s warm, lights are twinkling. You stand, sway, militant drums marching you into tomorrow. It’s ethereal. Nice.

Then track 2, F.E.A.R. (which stands for Forget Everything and Relax), somewhat lets the album down. Everything from the pseudo-inspirational lyrics to the mid-song wind down just seems cliché. I couldn’t take anything from this song, it didn’t offer any insight or feeling. Having said that, it did get me through the familiar melancholy of walking down Courtney Place.

The Time of Our Lives is a real 80’s dream-pop-inspired track. For me, this song really taps into something that the whole album might have been attempting. Twinkly and big echo on the vocals. The drums are epic, they play such a crucial role when the song later collapses into the climax. This is something different for Mild Orange and it works.

Directly contrary to that new sound, Oh Yeah comes in with a much more classic Mild Orange sound. A song “intentionally about nothing”, says the band’s Josh Mehrtens. It plays with the irony that “Even the decision not to have meaning has a meaning.” And 1000 bonus points from me because it has a sexy condenser-mic-style voiceover. I’m a real sucker for those, they make anything sound like poetry.

What’s Your Fire? has a riff that seems really appropriate to cry out across the city. Could be fitting at the start of a movie – it paints the background of just walking along going about your monotonous daily life. People are paying for parking and there’s homeless people around. The instrumentals are high pitched and lamenting.

The penultimate chapter of the album consists of two really long and forgiving songs. Hollywood Dreams is a gentle, romantic track. A little longer at five and a half minutes – it’s an indie-pop ballad. I like this track; I like the simplicity and how it unfolds and rambles. The final track Photographics… well, you’ll just have to give it a listen, because this is a track best heard for oneself.

I’d like to end this review by saying something that I cannot explain. This album has British vibes. Can anyone ever explain the vibes? I can’t, but I’m not going to beat myself up about it – and neither should Mild Orange.