“Ceiling Waves” trades in intricate compositional arrangements and unashamed emotional depth. An album for the good times, the bad, and everything in between.
Daniel McBride aka Sheep, Dog & Wolf is a New Zealand multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and composer who lives and works in London.
In August this year, McBride unveiled Sheep, Dog & Wolf’s third album “Ceiling Waves”. It’s a fitting title for a set of songs that rise and fall, often moving from maximal to minimal within a single movement. When beehype’s founder Mariusz Herma enthusiastically emailed about the album, he evoked the art-rock and progressive folk figures Robert Wyatt, David Sylvian, and Joanna Newsom as reference points – comparisons which all, perhaps unsurprisingly, hold water.
Released through Nacre Recordings, “Ceiling Waves” trades in intricate compositional arrangements and unashamed emotional depth. Considered within the broader context of Sheep, Dog & Wolf’s catalogue, it feels like a glorious culmination of McBride’s drive to integrate cerebral jazz, minimalism, and math-rock impulses with the visceral immediacy of McBride’s id.
There’s a lot of grief in these songs, but I could never reduce the music or songwriting down to one feeling alone. No, this is work about the full spectrum of life while you’re living with the pain of loss, one day at a time.
On “Guessing”, delicate psychedelic folk sensibilities collide with the hauntological ghosts of early dubstep and spluttering kick drums that recall Chicago footwork.
Later on, “We Sang As You Slept”, Stereolab-slanted keyboard figures and woozy bass stabs serve as the backdrop for a vocal sung like a paean to a higher force, occasionally collapsing into stargazed twinkles. Like the seasons and climates, many moods are on display here.
Ultimately, McBride seems to balance two forces: elegantly developed, polished melodies and arrangements, and considered, confessional lyrics penned by an artist trying to get on with it, while still feeling winded at unexpected moments. Even on the saddest days of our lives, we still sometimes have moments in the sun. By acknowledging this, “Ceiling Waves” is an absolute gift. It’s an album for the good times, the bad, and everything in between.
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