n any relationship, it’s often what’s not said that lingers longest, taken from an encounter and rendered indelible. Texan four-piece This Will Destroy You realize this better than most instrumental outfits, peppering their material with dialogue that’s no slave to language, to vowels and tongues. It’s communication without bounds, expressive and emotive and, most importantly of all, highly memorable.

Incredibly immersive, eerie, sad, sometimes terrifying, other times calm – Tunnel Blanket is the group’s third long-player. Delivering the epic-in-scope soundscapes that followers of its makers’ previous recordings are accustomed to, but presents them in new lights – where once the sun shone down bright upon immediate tropes and traits, now their work is better suited to distant starlight, casting changeable shadows across vistas of inspired, ambitious amplification. This is not an album to pick through in search of bold hooks and instant melodies. Whereas Young Mountain and S/T could be played in bookstores, coffee shops, and surfing videos, Tunnel Blanket commands and provides entire immersion between the recording and the listener. This is not background music and you’re not going to play it at family gatherings (save for perhaps a particularly dark funeral). But there is still beauty in the latest from This Will Destroy You. In fact, this could easily be described as the most beautiful album the band has ever made.