Having recently finished Karin Boye’s compelling 1940 novel ‘Kallocain’ and currently reading Orson Welle’s ’1984′, two books that cover similar themes of isolation of the individual’s mind in a terrifying, fictional, totalitarian state, I find myself being thrown into quite the opposite state of mind upon deciding to revisit The Morning Benders’ fabulous 2010 album Big Echo. The effect that the intro in the first song, Excuses, has on me is that of being gently awoken from a confusing, subtle but inescapable nightmare. As the drums rollick forward the kick-off of the song, the naively high-spirited guitars splash out a picture as bold and sweeping as the album’s tremendous cover art.

Excuses breathes fresh sea air and sports a breeze gently carressing its turn-of-the-last-century hair. The Morning Benders don’t even succumb to use actual sounds of waves like other bands with the seaside more often than not on their minds have, The Tough Alliance e.g., to conjure the image of a wave-splashed shoreline. They simply put that image on the album cover and let our imagination have its way with the music.

The result is exuberant. With folkish simplicity and a lofty singing of the nothing less than gilded melody, but yet with intricate production from Grizzly Bear member Chris Taylor, and a passage of doo-wop compassing its 1950s influence it blows open a world far away from grey urban landscapes and etch a picture, as if from a collective memory, of childhood joy, teenage friendships (”we’ll still be best friends when all turns to dust”) and a simpler past that is universal into our minds.

The slightly mind-baffling ending of Kallocain and the mental hazards of Winston in ’1984′ will have to wait and descend to the bottom reaches of my brain as Excuses takes me on a slightly more joyous journey. I could not think of a better way to reopen this blog than with this essential indie pop gem that Pitchfork’s Larry Fitzmaurice called a ”little ditty”. Then it must be the pretty darn best little ditty I’ve ever heard. The horizon is splashed wide open with rich, vivid colours by The Morning Benders. So there’s no excuses for you to not check out this track and then, hopefully, the rest of the album.

Thanks for reading and keep checking back in! There’ll be at least one entry per day. Considering the spirit I am in, this being my first published text in over a year and revisiting Big Echo and all, there will almost certainly be more than one per day for the foreseeable future.