SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: CITY AND COLOUR – A PILL FOR LONELINESS

City And Colour
A Pill For Loneliness
Still Records

After four years, City and Colour is back with his sixth studio album, A Pill for Loneliness. Featuring 11 tracks and coming in at 52 minutes, it is a sprawling album that retains the essential sound lead singer Dallas Green has established in his past work, most notably his distinctive voice, but this latest offering also manages to build such swirling, melancholy soundscapes around it that the final result is an album that feels even more lush and ethereal than ever.

From opening track “Living in Lightning”, to “Difficult Love”, to (my favorite) “Mountain of Madness”, and right through to the second half of the album with songs like “Strangers” and the closer “Lay Me Down”, there are no missteps here and by the second run-through, the pill offered here by the title is already dissolving in your ears.

City and Colour has always created a really powerful, emotional sound, one that acknowledges the listener’s alienation and longing with somber, reflective lyrics, yet is still beautiful and celestial enough to offer hope or at least some temporary transcendence, which makes City and Colour both the cloud and the ray of light that is shining through it. This makes it possible for this album to do to your mood whatever you need it to do, by either gently pulling you back from despair or easing you into moody contemplation.

One thing is certain, this collection of songs is so delicately constructed — especially if experienced through a good set of headphones — that the overall solemn beauty of the album still manages to bring forth some vital light of understanding, providing a sense of closure and acceptance that seems intended to urge the listener to pay more attention to the light than the clouds around it.

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