Album Review: Odesza’s ‘In Return’
Max Cherry ‘17 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer
Since we last spoke with Harrison Mills and Clayton Knight of Odesza (see our interview here), the two Seattle producers have been busy dealing with their new levels of popularity. After ranking number one in 11 different Hype Machine charts, reaching over 7 million listens on Spotify, and getting 16 million plays on SoundCloud, Odesza has released their second LP, titled In Return.
In Return is a beautiful album from start to finish and is filled with everything you would expect from an Odesza album: a happy atmosphere, catchy hooks, and beautiful singing that create relaxing, unique, pop-infused, electronic music. In this album, Odesza does a particularly great job at balancing their instrumental, lyric-less beats and vocal tracks featuring such artists as Zyra, Py, Shy Girls, and Madelyn Grant (who was featured in a previous Odesza hit, “Sun Models”). Vocal tracks flow seamlessly into instrumental beats, keeping you interested and focused in a way that instrumental music often fails to do. Instrumental tracks such as “Sundara,” “Kusanagi,” “Bloom,” and “Koto” all seem to have been influenced by Eastern traditional music, as evidenced by the mellow chanting that accompanies the songs’ modern beats.
After a summer touring music festivals across the country, Odesza is now headlining their own tour to promote In Return. They began their tour in Jackson Hole, Wyoming on September 13th, they’ll be making a stop in Cambridge to do a show at the Sinclair on October 4th, and they’ll finish their tour aboard the cruise music festival “Holy Ship!” which sets sail from Miami to the Carribbean on January 1st. With Odesza’s recent explosion in popularity, it’s no surprise to find that many of Odesza’s shows in the U.S. have already sold out. Though demand is high, sites like StubHub still have tickets available – get them while you can!