It’s fitting that Peripheral Vision’s opening lines sets the record up to be a vessel of nostalgia. When reflecting back on our lives, it often seems opportune to wash away the trials and regrets, the anxieties and setbacks, only leaving a stained glass mirage to peer through. The balance of the record is fantastic considering how awkward plucky clean-channel fenders can sound (watch the live versions of these songs for a comparison). ![]() Nothing here is too adventurous, in fact the bands enthusiasm for easy-listening has led to successive lesser records which simultaneously amplify and cloud Peripheral Vision’s triumph of longevity. The record succeeds because of its consistency each song glows with the lilt of a soft synth or reverb decay frozen through the grills of Getz’s Roland Chorus. just another dream that’s better than my life.” Centre stage though are ruminations on companionship and confounded social anxieties - “With you tonight, I know that I can make out / With you I can make it out alive.” Getz taps into the magic of desire and longing, the accession of requited love and the lulls in between. Elsewhere, he coins phrases that typifies the heady 20-something depressive populating metal shows every weekend - “adolescent dreams / gave to adult screams. “Cut my brain into hemispheres / I want to smash my face until its nothing but ears / I want to paint my drain with a little red stain tonight” is a shockingly dark admission to pair with ‘Take My Head’’s cutesy guitar refrain and warm fuzzy palette. Austin Getz's lyrics are imagistic, creative and daring. The record’s tunnel-vision for tortured intimacy is undeniable, sharing all the thematic hallmarks of pop-punk/emo bands such as Turnover’s label mates or rather the scene at large but I cant help but feel here it’s done differently. While there is something fundamentally American about Peripheral Vision, a hazy mid-west milieu I can only obliquely grasp at (there are shades of American Football here, I am certain), for me Peripheral Vision mapped perfectly onto the balmy nights of an Australian summer, the record somehow tapping into such memories of post-adolescent romanticism that coloured my life at the time. Some albums are inextricably linked to personal experiences times in one’s life that somehow a record hold the mnemonic keys to. It stands on the precipice between romantic hope and cathartic fantasy sunbathing in those sweet nothings from a girl in the crowd who you now can only access through memory. Threaded throughout Peripheral Vision are speculations on desire: what was a past relationship’s significance? Will being in love be enough for me? What does a new relationship portend to be? Grandfathered into the record’s fabric is an immediate sense of nostalgia - a longing for what was, what might’ve been, what might never be. Good Nature recaptures the brightness and pop sheen, sure, but it's a trip back to a treasured childhood location only to find that the palace in your mind was always just a fallen tree, and the river your dreams used to float along forever is just a kinda gross, muddy little stream.Review Summary: “it was one of those uneventful times that seem at the moment only a link between past and future pleasure, but turns out to be the pleasure itself.” -F. ![]() It's just that there's so damn little to praise, too. Serviceable hooks buoy up better tracks like "Super Natural" and "Nightlight Girl", while those effervescent guitar melodies take us by the hand to provide the only truly great moment as "Bonnie (Rhythm & Melody)" winds to a close. There's technically very little to fault here. They feint towards self-awareness - 'maybe I imagined it being so good' goes "Super Natural", like a tacit acknowledgement of the long shadow cast by Peripheral Vision - but ultimately this is a simple album full of simple lyrics, with little subtlety or thought to speak of. On Good Nature Turnover dive headfirst into the shimmering pool of nostalgia, chasing a butterfly dream but finding only empty tricks of the light. Where, then, to look? Peripheral Vision was a sly, duplicitous album, where shocking acts of violence and suicidal thoughts sat comfortably alongside guitar lines made from pure childhood memories and summer sunshine (see: "Cutting My Fingers Off", "Take My Head"). The problem is: what was so appealing as a blurry, half-remembered thought is nothing special when recaptured David Gilmour never clarified that fleeting glimpse out of the corner of his eye, because he knew (like we all do) that it could never live up to what we'd made it to be in our heads. This is an album where what was previously in the, sigh, peripheral vision has been placed in-focus, centre-stage and rendered undeniable. ![]() The difference between Good Nature and its predecessor is one of focus, of clarity.
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