Cries For Colour - "Yellow Sands; Or, Eight Tales of Pixie Mischief"
An album for the Fey-touched... or the family they left behind
I LOVE getting to highlight small artists. I’ve always tried not to be a hipster, but there’s a certain joy in discovering real talent well before the rest of the world (though, unfortunately, sometimes the rest of the world never catches on).
Cries for Colour is one such project. The brainchild of Canada’s Quinn Downton, Cries for Colour’s Prog Rock base was originally honed by its predecessor, Atumatu. That project was how I originally discovered Downton’s music. Then, a couple of years ago, in 2022, while updating my list of artists, I managed to find Downton’s Reddit account again (his shameless self-promotion there was how I had found Atumatu). He was able to point me to this new project — which had just released its debut album!
Fairlight was solid, and rated Green with me. But I suspected that the project would improve with time.
And now the sophomore album, Yellow Sands; Or, Eight Tales of Pixie Mischief, has arrived to prove me right.
At large, Yellow Sands is light, airy, and free-spirited Prog, Post-, and Psychedelic Rock, with a lot of Shoegazey moments throughout. Each track wanders through diverse terrain from start to finish while the instrumentation provides a lush, ambient soundscape for the dreamy vocals to explore. The stylistic and genric blends evolve naturally, but swiftly, and can change at the drop of a hat. Or a beat. Or trumpet or harmonica.
In descriptions he’s written on Spotify and Bandcamp, Downton directs potential listeners to “file under self-indulgent and unapologetically odd”; in a Reddit comment, he describes it as “a very pretentious concept album about Victorian ideas of disease and madness”. I’m pretty certain the pretentious claim is well-grounded self-awareness, as the album is accompanied by a companion essay,1 focused on Richard Dadd, a Victorian painter and madman through whom we can discuss, as this essay does, the evolution in society’s perception of mental illness and its treatment of so-called “lunatics”.
To be fair, Downton is, himself, a historian. His research on Dadd was one of the album’s major inspirations, so including an essay on the man and the evolving nature of asylums in Great Britain at the time makes sense; for full context, it seems that this essay is a sharply-edited version of Downton’s Masters thesis.
Downton is also a drummer and keyboardist; he is clearly very passionate about music, given that this is not remotely his first album or project. And this album is also very much a collaborative effort — Downton managed to pull in a host of contributing musicians, as its Bandcamp page makes clear:
Of these, I have to underscore Colin Edwin,2 of Porcupine Tree fame, whose basswork underscores and frames the entire album.
The extensive list of contributing artists means that the album’s most definitive traits are its fluidity and multi-layered complexity. These are, of course, hallmarks of Prog, Psychedelic, and Post-Rock, but Yellow Sands takes it to a whole new, ultra-dreamy level.
It’s just pretty. Even in its few heavier (comparatively) moments, it’s a treat for the ears.
And yet there is an incredible amount of depth here. I’m still trying to digest it all; the ethereal vocals are gorgeous, but they make it difficult to pick up every word.
Thankfully, I managed to get in touch with Downton and get hold of a copy of the lyrics. With this and the Research page of Cries for Colour’s website, we’re able to really delve into the album’s thematic meaning. Downton elaborates, on that page, with how Dadd’s story was the initial inspiration, but also with how the project evolved as he delved deeper into the Victorian mentality surrounding mental health issues and how the peoples of the British Isles have historically associated mental illness with the Fae.
The fact that Dadd frequently painted fairies only furthers the natural progression of this album in that direction.
They first appear in the album in track 3, “Heavenly Bodies”, with a direct statement on their effects on the mind:
“Titania sleeps in my body, in my mind Unquiet dreams are intertwined Years away, welled to the waters and the wild They’re passing slow as they smile"
This is reiterated later in the song with the line “Pixie-kist and led astray”.
I do not have time to thoroughly take this album apart and reassemble it to fully comprehend and illustrate how it works, but I do want to highlight a few more lyrics which give glimpses into its depths:
From “Dust Eater”:
"I’m a dust eater now I feel my brain is no longer my own to possess and claim Yet heart, hands remain But there’s no chorus of lamentations from the sky to rain" * * * * * * "She’s a dust eater now She feels her skin is no longer her own to possess and claim Yet eyes, nose, smile stay But there’s no chorus of lamentations from the sky to rain" * * * * * * "Lives in, lives out"
From “Water Lillies”:
"I don't want to live alone Can we drift a little longer Along the moon soaked shore I found love, so did you And it all came true We’re just two Pixie-kist water lilies"
I do want to include, before wrapping up, a paragraph from Sheila Taylor’s review of the album for Amplify The Noise:
At the same time, the album is personal. Quinn’s partner was diagnosed with advanced stage throat and lung cancer in mid-2023, the emotional weight of that experience seeped into the album’s lyrics and overall mood. Themes of illness, madness, and coping with personal turmoil permeate the songs. They create a work that is as much about the fragility of life as it is about historical narratives. This is reflected in the album’s sound, which shifts between ethereal and fragile melodies and moments of cosmic post-rock grandeur.
The final sentence here is the most apt descriptor I can imagine for this album’s sound, and I had to give credit to Taylor here. But also, this personal element, which is mentioned on the CfC website (link above), adds another meaningful layer to the album’s depth. Of which there’s already so much.
It’s not the first time I’ve reviewed an album which deals with such deeply personal loss.3 I do believe that the Victorians had it right on one front — artists need to be in touch with their feelings. And perhaps that does brings them closer to madness as an occupational hazard. But when they’re able to burrow into those feelings and distill them for the rest of us, we frequently get something transcendental as a result; something that the rest of us can use to help us process our own grief and loss and maintain sanity through the process.
I’m still not done with this album. It’s already one of my favorites of 2024. Expect to hear me rant about this one some more in the months to come.
Rating: Purple
The PDF is 19 pages long, but the essay, itself, is only 13 pages (and there are pictures).
I have to underscore the underscore here; Porcupine Tree has been amongst my absolute, all-time favorite bands for almost 20 years now. Deadwing and Fear of a Blank Planet accounted for a significant percentage of my listening in High School and college.
But also, Edwin has his own Substack page! I’ve also added him as a contributor to this post.
Just in the last five years, now, two other albums spring to mind:
Korn’s The Nothing (2019)
Sufjan Stevens’ Javelin (2023)