Review
Planning For Burial
Desideratum

We all have our dark places and those journeys to and through and from those midnight shores in the bleak silence of night can produce some of the most meaningful moments of one’s life whether it be a conversation with a person that you barely know or just sitting with your cat staring into its eyes wondering what its thinking and what the hell you are doing, but, stay with me here, there is also that dysphoria and longing that seeps into your pores and follows you around even in the brightest part of the day while no one is aware that you are self destructing or beating yourself up because you can think of no other way to relieve the anxiety. Some of us have been in these places and come out (barely by the skin of our teeth or otherwise) on the other side knowing that we brushed up against something that forever changes you but that intense longing never truly goes away and that is exactly what Planning For Burial hits on with Desideratum, a sprawling soundtrack of intense desire.

Planning For Burial has carved out a unique path in its existence, particular in the intervening years since the release of Leaving as frequent cassette tape releases and other assorted ephemera have trickled out dropping clues as to just where this one man (being one Thom Wasluck) band might be headed, and as a keen and close observer of the artist’s path, I still was only a bit prepared for the beautiful melancholy of Desideratum; I feel as though I have been living with this album for months, and while it is playing for the fifth time today as I am typing this, new sounds and new noises are creeping out of the swirling drone, layered guitars and keyboards, and subtle vocal ambience.

Listening to “Where You Rest Your Head” will immediately shed light on what to expect on Desideratum as Planning For Burial slowly builds the tension as the heartbeat drums seemingly lend life to the song as the swirling music sounds like the heavy breathing from a late night adolescent fantasy before finally letting loose and giving way to the gulping for breath post deed come down and slight euphoria, and just when the pretty guitar strums of the title track hit you in front of the lapping waves of even more guitar, you get the idea that the album has been lovingly and meticulously crafted and fraught over from every angle; the compulsion to drown myself in the secret dark pop of “29 August 2012” is overshadowed only by my unconscious need to not skip over anything or spoil the flow of Desideratum, content in just pressing play and letting the music work its magic and culminate with all of the grandeur that is “Golden”.

Desideratum is one of those albums that stays with you long after its stopped spinning on the turntable or playing in the car or whatever your method of listening may be at a given moment as a strong and lasting impression firmly roots itself in both your conscious and subconscious mind, and after weeks of playing the record, the album only seems to grow on you and further sink its teeth into your psyche; but perhaps the most impressive aspect of what Planning For Burial has done with this record is that Wasluck’s love of pop sensibility and being a sucker for a melody helps to create one of the most pop-y and catchy records drenched in drone making it memorable as well as hypnotic, and holy hell do I ever selfishly want more almost like an addict craves more and never wants it to end.