With their latest effort in Shimmer, Stay the Sea’s penchant for emotionally potent composition is made ever clearer. Shimmer focuses heavily on melody, tending to burn more slowly and resonate vibrantly, rather than blaze past quickly. This is made very evident from the opening track of the album, “Like eating glass,” in which the bowed guitar lines and delay-washed bass play off of one other in melancholy harmony for the first half of the song, before the drums finally come into play.

In addition to its deliberate pace, Shimmer shows off the band’s desire for musical diversity. Where “Like eating glass” shows off dissonance and unexpected chord structures, “For a lifetime or two” displays a clean, arpeggiated, emo-inspired sound coated in nostalgia and adventure, and “Beautiful” offers plenty of climactic outbursts and pentatonic-style riffs that evoke a more eastern sound. And that’s only a portion of the range in style and emotion that the album puts forth.

Stay the Sea is a post-rock/math/indie band based in Athens and Atlanta, GA. They draw influence from a very diverse and ever-growing catalog, though namely Thrice, A Lot Like Birds, Sigur Rós, Russian Circles, and lots of ambient and film music come to mind when attempting to pinpoint the top tier of influences.