In their debut album, Rose of the West took listeners on a hypnotic, brooding and whimsical journey through the intangible recesses of the shadow world. Blending spectre-signaling synth and cutting percussion with deft interjections of bass, tranquil melodies, and cool, sultry vocals, the result was at once haunting and hallucinatory, dreamlike and just out of reach. In No Things Permanent, we emerge from that winding forest into the cold, open plane of consciousness. Both we, and the speaker, are fully awake, propelled by driving beats and band leader Gina Barrington’s alternately lush, uncanny, and chant-like vocals to explore — and, occasionally, indict — the rituals upon which the dance of our narratives rely. Here, happily ever after assumes an “after” that becomes, at the moment of its arrival, a lost “before.” Here, a penetrating echo of chilling, shimmering synth is buoyed by the same undulating rhythm that ferries us across forceful disavowals and unanesthetized dissections of the futile, the desperate, the ephemeral, and the inevitable. The unspoken is spoken, and whether it comes in the form of a whisper or a war cry, a swaying melody or a pulsating, percussive pop current, the message is clear: this is a journey that requires we travel light; a call to let go, and to see what Bishop called “the art of losing” as the art of metamorphosis. Fruition is a step toward death, yes, but in that false finality, we’re reborn.

No Things Permanent is being released September 8, 2023 on Communicating Vessels.