their previous releases feel like passing experiments of dredging dark alleys, hoping against death that your better outlook will see it all through. this feels like it's in a different universe, a different state of existence entirely.

the songs aren't subversions of primeval emotions, they're just captured in some of the most aching, longing dispositions, rearticulated in this odd middle space, between reality and daydream, between modernity and history. but it's not conceited; they—Fraser, the band, you, the album animated—all know this is possible, that the dreams painted are semi-realities you can wriggle towards.

and every image is smeared just like the cover. you can't make it out all at once; besides, it would be an empty errand to pick apart, razors slicing the canvas just to see the layers and what lies beneath until you can't make out the original anymore.

it can only be that one throughway, that one full picture—but there's no more teeming a path, of ethereal tears, air-brushed chords, cold reminiscence, warm cradles—of chasing down an inevitable memory that lies just past where you can see now.

whether it tears you out of life or throws you into itself, Heaven or Las Vegas can never be repeated; the paint it uses has been forever tied up. it wholly perfected itself, but only with the materials it knew would be for its own sake. the only shudders, the only aches that it still has left in its spirits are of hoping that you can find yours.