OKADA - Misery (2018)

While its title may hint at hardship and/or anguish, Misery is not all sturm und drang. There is a underlying hope in the album's epic yet pertinent 80 minute run-time. The album, which was originally conceived as a double album, opens with "Bury Me": an upbeat track only succumbing to its overwhelming emotional heft at the song's halfway mark. Pappas has always been adept at displaying his current head-space in his music and Misery displays him in a fairly deep well of melancholy. Even the drum work, which is most-often syrupy and elastic, has a certain aching quality to them. And the sometimes out-of-tune piano work also fits right in, where otherwise it would not. Simply put, Misery has placed an exclamation point on OKADA's creative ethos and has given us a remarkable look into Pappas' transla- tion of such emotions.