With their debut album The Ways We Separate, Brooklyn based-group Beacon has fashioned a wholly original mode of soft electronica. From the press circulating over the album it might be interpreted that The Ways We Separate is supposed to be a sort of hipster reworking of a sexy, R&B sound. Certainly, the songs are full of soft, breathless whispers and gentle mood swings, but the effect of its vast empty spaces, slowly-evolving synths and hesitant downtempo melodies invokes something much different than mere dim-lit make-out music, something that is much more haunting and internalized.
The lyrics of “Feeling’s Gone” might be encouraging you to “stay the night” but its soft claps, sweeping textures, mystic pads and far-off chimes are a solitary confinement of mysterious, metamorphosing emotions. Similarly “Bring You Back” hypnotizes with its cooing bells and dispersed echoes. “Between The Waves” seems to delve into the territory of reminiscence with diving sweeps, vague circumambient vocals, and retraced steps. Unfortunately, after a few songs the effect begins to wear off and songs become a little too similar to induce the same lulling stupor, so that tracks like “Overseer” and “Studio Audience Full” end up feeling too empty and unfulfilled.
A couple notable remaining tracks are “Drive,” with its heavy electro strike and dark momentum, and “Headlights”, whose groovy croons aims for a sort of sexy reassurance. The lengthy “Split in Two” finishes off the album with a little brighter variance to its tone, but it only seems to seal you further in the sepulchral atmosphere that Beacon has so carefully and enticingly created.
