Living in Florida for the past nine years, I’ve realized that a lot of people like to paint the state we live in as a place where there are limits to the amount one can do for fun. Perhaps these generalizations come from our flighty nature—we bounce around between groups of friends, cliques, communities, etc. But I find that, once you’re comfortable within your circle, what you can get involved with multiplies tremendously, and you’ll often be encouraged to participate creatively and do some things you’ve never imagined being a part of.
It didn’t take too long for me to settle within a scattered yet interconnected web of musicians, artists, curators, and the generally appreciative DIY crowd once I moved to East Orlando. Soon after, I ended up making lots of friends from all over the state, who all shared similar parallels and the same passion for music and community. One particular night that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget is Hundred Waters’ debut album release show in Gainesville two years ago. Lots of friends made the trip from all over, and it was truly telling to see everyone gather around an act they all believed it. I remember everyone was immediately wide-eyed from the stage installations, and I remember talking with numerous new friends about the brimming potential that Hundred Waters’ self-titled album brought to Florida’s reputation.
It’s safe to say, Florida will always be home to Hundred Waters. The band even recorded their sophomore album, The Moon Rang Like A Bell, in Miami late last year. Yet there was still some semblance of backlash with Hundred Waters moving out of their home in Gainesville, Florida to go on their seemingly endless string of tours, before finally residing in Los Angeles. I like to think a lot of this was actually just melodrama played up by some people’s half-convictions. The truth was Hundred Waters had touched a lot of people in Florida in a very short amount of time. Many of us were simply not ready to share this group of special individuals with the rest of the world. Before it was all fully realized with this second record, many of us also knew this band would end up bigger than the tight-knit Florida scene that was behind them, and it was only a matter of time before we embraced that.
Truth be told, I feel as if my time in Florida is also coming to end, and it’s not that I so desperately want to leave. There’s just a sense of adventure that is no longer entirely there, no matter how many abandoned St. Augustine buildings are left to explore or how many underwater caves are still worth diving into. The more I listen to the new record, the more it all coincides with my drifting feelings about where I hope to be this time next year. In a way, The Moon Rang Like A Bell has elevated this recurring theme of transience that I haven’t been able to shake with everything I’ve done this year alone. This theme likely feels more appropriate for Hundred Waters themselves, who didn’t have a true home for a long time while they were writing the new album on tour across the world.
On the new album, transience is especially emphasized throughout much of the middle of the album. “Broken Blue,” for example, opens with a brief recording of a past Skype session and slowly leads into a tender ballad behind the warm fuzz of its production. The soft tones extend onto the next few tracks, and this part of the record truly hits home in many ways. Following the classically influenced “Down From the Rafters,” the album takes a short detour through the album’s outlier in “[animal],” where it coyly shows a more cyclical production. This style carries into “Seven White Horses,” aside from the emphasized percussion and drum machine featured in the previous song. The song-writing give us a lot to take in, but there are also some distinctions that can be drawn between the number of different styles thrown together by the end of the album.
The entire opening and first half of The Moon Rang Like A Bell feels much more cohesive and still transitions well into the latter half of this record. The whole tracklist demands one full playthrough if you want to grasp completely the album’s reincarnated feelings of impermanence. “Murmurs,” though, might just have been a perfect lead-in to the different things going on throughout this record, as the whole intro to the song cycles around Miglis’s words, “I wish you would see what I see.” After that, “Cavity” easily embraces its release as a single, but also fits very well before “Out Alee” and the rest of the record. The album’s sequencing might be the record’s greatest takeaway in the end.
The Moon Rang Like A Bell is officially out today via OWSLA.