Album Review: Courage My Love – Synesthesia

InVogue Records recording artists Courage My Love have released their eagerly anticipated sophomore album, Synesthesia, the fourteen track album was released last Friday, the 3rd February 2017 and is now available on all formats. The Ontario based trio have spent the past eight years building a loyal following through steady touring across the USA and Europe, including joining the Vans Warped Tour in 2016, and through a series of critically acclaimed EP’s and their 2015 debut, Becoming, that preceded the release of their latest full length. The album’s title refers to a term where senses overlap and the stimulation of one sense leads to an automatic, involuntary reaction in another, which is a lofty ambition for any album to achieve.

Synthesthesia is an album that is a very slick blend of alternative and indie influences that are delivered with a poppy sensibility, the precise beats are overlaid with sparkling keyboards and steady driving bass lines that are topped off with soaring vocals and anthemic choruses. Almost every track on Synthesthesia follows their precise formula, the album only takes a brief detour from it’s formulaic approach on the brief instrumental intermissions, Sight Sound and Taste Touch, that tie in with the albums title that refers to blurring of the senses, but aside from this Courage My Love have released an album that lies very much in their comfort zone, and at the poppier end of the alternative spectrum.

Courage My Love‘s debut album washes over you in waves, whilst everything about this album is impressive, it never quite grabs you and demands your attention, Synthesthesia is an album that marks a logical progression from their earlier material, but, and this an important but, with the rough edges removed, for me it was these elements that gave their earlier material more drive. Their latest release is one that should appeal to their established fans as they’ve maintained elements of their early recordings, but their transition to a poppier approach is one that I can see bringing them mainstream appeal and success, whilst this is not an album that appeals to me, it’s one that I can see taking them to a wider audience.

You can order Synesthesia via InVogue Records here