Chet Fight Against Darkness

Referring to one's home as 'The Island' speaks for the correlating demograhic's relative isolation from the rest of the world. I know this because the globe is enumerated with islands, (archipelagos for that matter), and yet; I often dictate this exact reference. That said, in establishing the greater reach of this article, the rock at hand is Vancouver Island, and pertinently, Victoria - the home of Chet.

In 2004, Chet released their sophomore album, Kau'ai. Benignant with the lonesome grace of Ryan Beattie's wavering falsetto, the waltz of each lingering instrument glided somniferous between spacial voids and rustling time signatures. With its downhearted will and pristine glare, Chet fostered the melancholy of an on setting island winter, after summer tourism had met its demise. With its tale of frozen hearts sunken in shrouds of mist, Kau'ai was enamored with its environment while it simultaneously alluded an island far, far away.

Three years later, Chet return for their third full length, boasting with an unfamiliar convalescence. Under the confident proclamation Fight Against Darkness, the title foreshadows the album's tonal progression, undoubtedly trumping its predecessor in terms of optimistic bombast. While Kau'ai was delicate and eerie, Fight Against Darkness is proud and self-assured.

Buoyantly opening with The Shepherd, Ryan glides on-stage with the remark "the beauty of the things you've never considered", beckoning the album's revelatory perspective. His gentle soliloquy is hallowed by piano before it becomes a swaying movement, hailing a twinkling guitar atop a strong breadth of cello. Soon the song has rotated to gather invincibility, its triumphant momentum throwing like salt thrown at the shoulders.

Though this vitality becomes characteristic of the album, at times the songs trudge with a banal consistency, especially when Ryan sets aside his diverse emotive range. On Because My Name is Lion, Ryan's brother Patrick returns to the vocal contributions he made to Kau'ai, and as with Fog City, the track remains dreary and desolate, never pulling out of its dusty corner. Patrick's voice is everything Ryan's falsetto is not, and though an interesting juxtaposition by principal, it seems to pull from the atmospheric sound that Chet so carefully cradles. As Patrick returns for the album's closer, The Explanation, the album disembarks on an unbalanced toe.

In consideration that Fight Against Darkness was recorded in various sessions (some of the tracks surfaced on the internet last summer), the recorded collection comes across more as an amalgamated line-up than an ephemeral snapshot. Drawing a noticeable weight on the album's consistency, the main downfall is its occasional forced instrumental breaks and predictable tempo changes.

The most overt example is the second track, Ships Sink In the Fall. Entering with familiar vulnerability, the track breaks into an all-aboard instrumental procession by the click-click cue of drum stick against drum stick. Uncomfortable for the first few minutes of its collected 11:11, the track finds a steadier grace and less tried contentment by the eight minute mark. But instead of falling out shortly thereafter in a wistful dénouement, it attempts to return to soliloquy and build again, hyperbolizing its introductory weakness.

Though cutting in with predictable ingress seems to be the fashion of the album, Fight Against Darkness is not inept to seamless tonal strikes. The anecdotal shimmers and underscored proximity of songs such as The Flattering Soul and Antarctica were the drape and dance of Kau'ai, and this grace is nurtured again in discrete moments of Fight Against Darkness: the organ that nestles into the ukulele inspired elegance of Very Old Story, the gentle incline through The Shepherd, or the soulful horn contributions on Darlton Harbour (to grapple a few).

As on Darlton Harbour, the periodic brass accentuation is contributed by They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, where By Night Into Paradise proves to be the most ravishing contribution. This also proves to be the track where the growing camaraderie between Ryan's part time position in Frog Eyes and his position in Chet becomes discernable. While on their last albums Chet and Frog Eyes sounded nothing alike, their instrumental ascensions have begun to share a certain echo; if that says anything for the city's semblance. Bleeding into the squirming shout of Mercer, the song weaves its tension into another triumphant dance of the island menagerie: "The mist/is coming in by night, into paradise/in the spring, it's a drive/in the fall there is a mist that will just cover you in awe."

Churning with their newfound confidence, Chet's noble attempt to grow out instead of crumble as the result of Ryan's dissolving melancholy proves a hearty dissertation. Though in disembarking from the icy imperial vulnerability of Kau'ai a certain degree of enchantment is lost, their air remains dense with residual moisture. As Fight Against Darkness speaks for a battle that suddenly is combatable, their defense steps up as a vital and willing opponent, leaving Chet to march with a fresh and charming charisma.