Frontier Ruckus - On the Northline (2024) [Hi-Res]

For as much that can happen with the passing of years, sometimes more happens in an instant. Frontier Ruckus has dedicated themselves to cataloging the impact of imperceptible, everyday moments, crafting a singular artform of their own making with gorgeous orchestral folk pop arrangements and songwriter Matthew Milia’s complex lyrical observations on the mundane and the holy. The years following the group’s fifth album; 2017’s anxiously opulent Enter the Kingdom, have been big years. Their decade-plus of ceaseless touring was forcibly ended by the same global rerouting that affected everyone at the dawn of 2020, but as that surreality played out, Milia was also walking a separate concurrent timeline where he truly found love, got married, and in due time became a father. Sixth album On the Northline was labored over as these bizarre and beautiful days played out, carefully built to act as a centrifuge for the scattered emotional states and flashes of joy, doubt, and gratitude that inspired it. The songs map the changes that come gradually but inevitably with age, but also illuminate how entire existences can shift with a glint of sun off of the windshield, or in the time it takes to notice a stranger walk into the room.