With a larger than life sound that brings immunisation against low mood through its melodies, you are introduced to an immaculate force of electronic and rock elements covering wide-ranging dynamics and flavours throughout the album with a unique quality.
All the songs offer their own warmth and emotional embrace, wrapping in the cosy essence of their particular theme. The energy flows like calm and stormy weather, built by the flawless performance of instrumental and vocals.
The production screams indie in every song, sustaining its sentimental beauty and nailing the art of experimentation. Once you start listening, it's impossible to pause throughout this journey and you'll eventually become one with it.
Elongated reverbs and crunchy, distorted guitars are grabbed tightly by the punchy drums. Open strings shimmer through the verses and chorus, slowly reaching the infinite depth of the compositions.
The greatness of the vocals lies in the heart-touching tone and realising that the voice totally represents what the singer feels. In fact, the lyricism has clarity and relatability that you can hold on to. If you have been through this pandemic, 'Neon Inoculation' is your vaccine.
Definitely listen to 'Neon Inoculation' by Underlined Passages on Spotify.
About Underlined Passages
"After nearly four years away, Underlined Passages release their new record, Neon Inoculation, as an experiment. They threw out the rule book and recorded the album as a series of singles on Spotify, culminating in a full-length. In addition, they sequenced the album in the spirit of the traditional mixtapes the band grew up listening to.
Neon Inoculation (Mixtape) is a YouTube-only release set up for the listener to engage as they would a traditional record. You can take in the sequence as one long movement with interspersed mini-songs and interludes/bagatelles-a shout-out to the lo-fi indie mixtapes before internet 2.0 and social media (and how the band would prefer listeners to engage).
Neon Inoculation, recorded by Frank Marchand (Sugar, The Thermals) and mastered by Alan Douches (The Promise Ring, Sufjan Stevens, Animal Collective), is a pandemic-fuelled reflection on what many went through and still feel today. It also represents a return from the wilderness from this hard-working band from Baltimore. A return many of us are experiencing now, climbing back from this tragic pandemic.
It has been a long and arduous journey back to music for Baltimore's Underlined Passages.
The duo-Jamaal Turner and Michael Nestor-spent 2015-2017 building a musical reputation by appealing to listeners passionate about song writing that is guitar-driven, emotionally intense, and ephemeral. The band's sheer grit and work ethic slowly but surely began to win over audiences at venues large and small across the Northeast US-even though many are oversaturated with seemingly infinite choices in indie rock and indie pop.
The hard work paid off with the response to their last full-length, 2017's Tandi My Dicafi. Tandi helped build on a core loyal fanbase that has followed the band through various iterations and continues to stick with them. Reviews of Tandi at the time reflected what audiences enjoyed about the band, namely their dynamic indie rock/pop song writing and musicality that was one part hopium and one part ennui.
Underlined Passages was gaining audiences at larger and larger venues, spending more time playing repeated dates in large cities like New York and in storied venues rather than in their own native Baltimore. Tandi charted consistently in the top 20 on a slew of large terrestrial radio stations, with Underlined Passages being asked to play and interview in-studio for several of them.
All was well with the band, and then it all came to a tragic and sudden halt.
Tragically, right before the recording of Tandi, Jamaal suffered a devastating and unspeakable personal loss. Although Jamaal and Michael agreed to push on supporting the record (mostly to keep busy), the emotional trauma took its toll in the late fall of 2017.
When Michael found out that issues with his vocal cords may prevent him from singing permanently, the band took it as a sign that it was time to let go. So Underlined Passages decided to quietly stop.
Then something wonderful happened.
In the winter of 2019, Jamaal and Michael sat down for dinner and asked whether they were ready to begin again. The answer was a resounding "Yes!" But this time was different. Before they had a chance to have their first rehearsal, the world faced the pandemic, and the project was put on hold again. It seemed like a higher power was saying, "No!" to the yes.
The duo was lost with the rest of the world. Then an idea. Why not put out a song to raise funds for the Red Cross for the pandemic response? The highly successful fundraiser driven by a new song, "Bifurcation," was picked up by the US and European radio and blogosphere-with the German blog She Wolf stating that Bifurcation was "a song that inspires indie rock fans not only with fantastic songwriting...but also inspires feeling and emotion and kidnaps the listener into his own cosmos."
Fundraising for The Red Cross inspired Jamaal and Michael to record a new full-length and use this new approach. Enjoy!"