Album Review: Richard Reed Parry - Quiet River Of Dust, Vol 2: That Side Of The River

Canadian multi-instrumentalist Richard Reed Parry is perhaps best known for his role within bombastic indie-rock band Arcade Fire, although his solo albums, as the title of this one attests, are more concerned with patient introspection than stadium-sized catharsis. “I dove into the blue and the green,” Parry sings on the album’s gauzy and atmospheric lead single, Lost In The Waves. “What I found there was a quiet world waiting for me.”

The album is a sequel to the contemplative first volume of Quiet River Of Dust, released last year. According to Parry, the two records are intended to represent each side of a metaphysical river, with this one exploring the murky waters of memory and the unconscious mind. While a study of this kind of interiority is inevitably one that risks sinking into quagmires of unbearable navel-gazing, Parry’s compositions are hypnotic and swirling with textures, as the distinctions between where one sound ends and another begin to prove difficult to distinguish. This is an album that encourages full immersion, inviting you to surrender to its sense of temporal and emotional displacement.