Taking Solace (Gate)

Double gatefold vinyl. Vansire's latest album, Taking Solace, finds them reaching for love as a means of comfort and connection, a balm as society's edges ever-sharpen. Toeing the line between melancholy and optimism with some of their strongest, most mature and straightforward songwriting, Vansire frame the act of taking solace as valid, positive, even political. Taking Solace offers a markedly softer gesture toward the times following 2022's Modern Western World, which was written from Minneapolis amidst it's civil flashpoint. Augustin and Winemiller have come out of the past few years, like many of us, fatigued yet focused on their immediate universe, doing what they can for the people they love, resisting greed-fueled regimes - home and abroad, environmental and technological - with enthusiasm for life.