![Being captain means a lot to Larson, having played basketball for his entire life. When asked about who their biggest competitor was going to be this season, Larson was very confident.
“[We have] No competitors,” Larson said.](https://ballardtalisman.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/brewster-color-1200x800.jpg)
Phantogram’s latest album, “Memory Of A Day” released on October 18, 2024, brings with it a whole new trip through a stark, emotional landscape with hope on the horizon. For years, Phantogram’s sound has been heavy almost to the point of harshness, with reverberating drumbeats and sharp electronics.
If you’re like me, then Phantogram’s rougher songs – tracks like the 2017 single “Black Out Days” or 2016’s “You Don’t Get Me High Anymore,” music that pierces and grates without letting up – are all I could ask for in a new album. “Memory Of A Day” lives up to those expectations with “Attaway” and “Jealousy,” as well as “Come Alive,” all with their own brand of satisfying severity.
But the duo of vocalists and instrumentalists Sarah Barthel and John Carter also know how to flip the script. At this point, Phantogram is no stranger to calmer songs that earn their “psychedelic pop” label through more personal imagery.
From the titular track “Memory Of A Day,” where Carter drawls in a melancholic voice about “clinging to the postcard of a dream”, to the cryptic “Ashes,” full of lyrics like “floating to the ceiling, sinking in your teeth,” the album blends the visceral and the everyday sorrow. The transition isn’t always seamless, the differences between songs that lean into the surreal (“Running Through Colors”) and bolder, more unapologetic tracks (“Jealousy”) can be jarring, but there is consistency in “Memory Of A Day” if you know where to look.
Almost every song is built around an electric beat that pulses with energy, pent-up emotion and memory packed into a flowing current of music. It’s easy to get lost in the band’s newest songs. Tracks “Come Alive” and “Feedback Invisible” in particular seem committed to filling as much of the mind as possible with Phantogram’s dream-like rock, Barthel
To really find the quality that gives Phantogram its depth of feeling in a sea of synth, you have to look past the sound for the lyrics. In “Memory Of A Day” alone, there is imagery of colliding stars and dying suns, things that are hard to define and easier to let take you away.
Their first album since 2022’s “Eyelid Movies (Expanded Edition),” “Memory Of A Day” finds a home in the impossible. It works because often it isn’t asking to be understood, leaving interpretation up to the listener.
The band describes themselves as not being afraid to experiment, something that the boundary-pushing 2024 album proves to be true. The music that Phantogram produces is unlike anything I’ve ever listened to, moving away from its inspirations into futuristic sound and psychedelic worlds.
