Album Review

Rivulets – You Are My Home

• 18th Aug 2008

Rivulets is the solo project of Nathan Amundson, a man who clearly considers himself capable of Sigur Ros-esque dreamy and atmospheric music. Sadly, on the strength of ‘You Are My Home’, the American has ideas above his station.

Although the music provides an often blissful ambient effect, Amundson’s vocals leave a lot to be desired. It’s all well and good having impressive lyrics to fall back on, but not when your voice descends into an incomprehensible murmur – if listeners want to appreciate the lyrics they need to be able to hear them.

Many of the tracks on this album would probably be better off as instrumentals, particularly the sporadically haunting title track, yet the sole instrumental track on the album – ‘Greenhouse’ – is little more than white noise for a painful three minutes. It takes Amundson five tracks to properly open his mouth to sing, producing a sound that makes you question the purpose of his earlier whining. However, it appears for the majority of the album that good vocals and good lyrics are mutually exclusive, be it on the overlong ‘Motioning’ or the dismal ‘Win or Lose’.

It is not until the final two tracks that
Amundson comes into his own. The aptly-titled ‘Happy Ending’ draws to a close so beautifully that one almost forgets the dreariness of what preceded it, while the acoustic-driven ‘Morning Light’ puts a number of similar musicians to shame. Now why couldn’t Rivulets have sustained this over the course of a whole album.