By Deuce

Captn K’s latest offering Salad Days, which was released on Apple Music March 5, is perfect for throwing on and zoning out to. It’d be ideal for meandering about some club on dope—if people still did that and indeed, depending on where you are, they most assuredly do. It’s also primed for late night listening no matter where you are as a number of the tracks, particularly the ones that are heavily based on instrumentals and largely devoid of vocals, are introspective.

There’s definitely a mellow, ‘the sunrise is coming but let’s still deny it’ type vibe to most of the six songs on the EP. “Unspoken Words” provides a handy case in point of this fact. It’s up tempo yet still laid back and built around immense chords that are as smooth as any to ever grace popular, or even rhythm and blues, music.

With an easily accessible four-on-the-floor drum pattern it’s somehow safe and reassuring, especially when you hear the refrain of “I’m so glad this cage I’m in is with you”. Although it clocks in at nearly five and a half minutes the good Captn easily could’ve rode it out five minutes more, coming up with additional examples of a suspended state of animation, as it were, deliciously enjoyed with someone else.

The titular track which is the maiden voyage on this assortment of songs helps to set the tone for the album by levitating for a good part of it. I kid you not, there’s some heady, wavering synths of sound layers floating around your ears and the world itself when you throw this one on. It’s such a pronounced feeling it’s almost a disappointment when the artist, who produced this work in its entirety and manned all of the instruments, drops the drums at about a minute into the affair. Doing so breaks the spell and helps to ground the tune some, which certainly isn’t bad, but isn’t as fun as hanging in the air with it.

It’s this sort of creative approach to making music that’s nothing less than inspirational on the majority of these songs that invite one to dance while putting something heavy on your mind—even if you can’t exactly describe what that is.