Everyone Will Eventually Leave You by Soulwhirlingsomewhere (Review)

Michael Plaster has once again, under the moniker Soulwhirlingsomewhere, produced yet another highly emotional and heartwrenching album with Everyone Will Evenutally Leave You. The title is more than accurate in describing the mood. Whereas Soulwhirlingsomewhere’s debut Eating The Sea was an intensely intimate recording, Everyone Will Evenutally Leave You has a more sombre and distant tone.

The music, combining stark acoustic guitars with synths that move from deep, swirling sounds to spacey twinklings and drones, is much more distant than before; musically, I would compare it to albums such as the Cocteau Twins’ Victorialand. Plaster moves into ambient territory much more readily than before, but it is a cold, distant ambience. However, this does not decrease the beauty or the impact of the music one bit. Somehow, Plaster is able to combine these two elements into beautiful, minor-keyed symphonies that wash through your heart, evoking scenes of long-abandoned towns, stretches of desert highways, and the heartbreaks of your heart and soul.

Lyrically, Plaster is still as open and honest as before. The lyrics are much starker, with a kind of empty beauty about them. Gone is Eating The Sea’s lush, forlorn romanticism. Once again, Plaster manages to capture those moods that we think are too “big” or “difficult” for words to describe. He wraps them up in his beautiful and soothing voice. His delivery is never bombastic or up front, and yet it manages to convey a sense of power and understanding unlike anyone else I’ve ever heard, especially on songs such as “A Mouse In The Mouth” or “5 Days & the Mind’s Erased.”

With Everyone Will Evenutally Leave You, Soulwhirlingsomewhere creates another moving tribute to those times of longing and melancholy, without becoming overly pretentious and trite. I often wondered how he would follow up the masterpiece that was Eating The Sea. While not as immediately inviting as Eating The Sea, this album is just as satisfying and has my highest recommendation. Now, I find myself reaching for Everyone Will Eventually Leave You much more often than Eating The Sea.