Grade: 4.0 / 5.0
The Avalanches, so far, have released music once a decade. Their first album came in 2000; their third one,
We Will Always Love You, now comes out 20 years later. This slow pace has added a veil of deliberation and reverence to their releases, and their new album is as precise and venerable as their previous ones.
We Will Always Love You is warm but chilly, welcoming yet distant. It simultaneously ascends and descends an eternal staircase, constantly moving away from one point and cautious in every mesmerizing step it takes.
The album is anthological in scope, with echoes of different voices hollowing out the chilled atmosphere. On “We Will Always Love You,” singer Blood Orange is an effervescent guide, a Virgil guiding the audience’s Dante into the underground. Rivers Cuomo’s corniness becomes endearing on “Running Red Lights,” and Superorganism’s Orono Noguchi delivers monolithic, monotonous monologues that give the album its structural integrit