CIRCLES AROUND THE S

Coming back together after going on hiatus in 2002, Dispatch return with their breezy and laid-back fifth album, Circles Around the Sun, their first album of new material since 2000's Who Are We Living For? Given the lengthy time they spent apart, the reunion finds that Dispatch have effortlessly updated their sound. Perhaps owing to the central theme of the album, which is a tribute to the legend of Larry Perry, a disabled man who was (allegedly) sent into space, the album has an expansive, drifting feeling. The songs seem to float around one another without any of the jammy bounce or more (relatively) aggressive moments found in their earlier work. This lends songs like "Sign of the Times" and "Come to Me" a sense of wistful plaintiveness, adding emotion without burdening the listener with a lot of unnecessary weight. This kind of shift is an interesting one, because while Dispatch haven't been making new music for over a decade, they have played the occasional show, so it would've been easy for them to just fall straight back into their old groove. Instead, it seems that they continued to grow as a band even when they weren't one, giving the feeling that, had they stayed together in the intervening years, there might've been an album or two showing the evolution to this more languid and mature version of the band. While fans of the band will no doubt be eager to get their hands on new material from these guys, they can rest assured that they'll be getting a solid album and that absence has not merely made the heart grow fonder. ~ Gregory Heaney