Song: Seeplymouth

Artist: Volcano Choir

Album: Unmap (2009)

There is a genre of music that is particularly good for passenger listening. That is, being listened to by a be-headphoned passenger in a moving car, bus or train. I call it microcosmic music: the kind of soundtrack that, song by song, builds its own dramatic and all-encompassing universe. These are thinking songs, they drown the listener in sound to inspire vivid images as the seconds tick by. It need not match the landscape blurring by outside your window: its tones might be sepuchral and bleak while the sun shines brilliant outside, or its melody riotously verdant during a winter pall. What matters is the build of an entire world within the rise and fall of one song, and Volcano Choir has made it a specialty.

The bombastic percussion in “Seeplymouth” is reminiscent of the music of fellow microcosm-makers Explosions in the Sky, but where their music seems a great sturm und drang set in a lightless void, this song is carried on mincing, expectant steps to its climax. Before it can arrive, however, the eerie vocals of Justin Vernon seep into the cracks and begin to transform it into something epic, crashing and primal.