as this album has stories upon stories, lyrical wit that trips and falls over itself ad infinitum, there is little that can be said for it at the end of the day. it is absolute, a pre-nostalgic, post-becoming set of difficult fables, and every harp flourish and vocal inflection is calculatedly expansive. even as Emily and Only Skin stretch past twelve and sixteen minutes, they never get tiresome, their blissfully idyllic backgrounds exploding past colorful irises. it all might come off as overly pastoral sometimes, but so much of this is nowhere near; it is an empyrean trip, arresting and icily excising.

no album reaches to that space in such a way. plenty try their hardest, and a few handfuls get damn near as close while taking vastly different avenues. none are like this. none practice this level of allusion and fantasy so closely and don't come off as either a bit too hollow or turgid.

the pauses and careful space given to the repeated mantra on Emily of meteorites and wonderful exploration and 'hydrocephalitic listlessness;' the closest fable told with swelling kicks with Monkey & Bear; ephemeral life and shared grieving on Sawdust & Diamonds; the culmination of everything altogether on Only Skin and the explosion of myth on Cosmia to epilogize such an out-of-body experience... it is all so overwhelmingly, spectacularly extraordinary. her filtered but spry timbre is one-of-a-kind, and no other could voice this nearly as acutely.

"Can you hear me? Will you listen? / Don't come near me; don't go missing / And in the lissome light of evening / Help me, Cosmia, I'm grieving"

and all melts back into all.