Aleutians’ new single, “Osiris,” arrives sounding for all the world like a breezy afternoon on the coast, jangly and familiar. The New Brighton project creates the sort of wistful guitar pop that should be soundtracking a montage of fondly-remembered mistakes. But then you catch the words, and the cheerful tide turns into something much colder, pulling you out from a safe shore.
The whole affair reminds me of a piece of verdigris-coated brass I once found at a flea market—a small, intricate tool for navigation, long since seized up. This song has that same feeling: an instrument of purpose now dedicated to the sweet, final poetry of getting utterly and completely lost.
Here, self-destruction isn’t a thrashing tragedy; it’s a lullaby. The narrator seems exhausted by the duty of “plotting the channels,” weary of safe harbors and the rational world. The pull of sirens and “Eldridge fiends” isn’t a threat but an invitation, a release into a world they feel they finally “belong” to. Aleutians have crafted a strangely comforting hymn to happily sinking, where the hypnotic plea to be “dragged down” and “sleep beneath the wave” is imbued with a satisfying calm.
It’s a peculiar, addictive sort of melancholia, the sound of letting go with a quiet smile. It leaves you pondering a single, unsettling question: what would it feel like to finally answer the call of your own beautiful abyss?
