The title to Hammock’s “It’s OK to Be Afraid of the Universe” has an undertone of humor given the moods and steady paces to which we’re treated throughout the song. Somehow the percussion conveys a sense of descending rhythms, a trait one more often attributes to tones and melodies. And the layered, interlocking sheets of blooming, melodic drift accomplished by guitar feels like a new frontier from a band that hasn’t exactly been short on inventive dynamics and textural moods that feel like both a complex emotional swirl moving through us and the fine details of the weather felt passing over our bodies. At times it sounds like the band is building a coolly glowing tower of fading melodies that dissolve and reconstitute to cascade gently apart. At nearly ten minutes in length this track could plateau and feel like repeating motifs but there are such unconventional anchors for the eddys of tonal resonance that when themes flow back in it takes on a new iteration that sets a new mood and the intermittent use of vocal sounds and strings toward the latter half of the song it all feels more tranquil and comforting than it did even in the beginning yet within one realizes how spacious the structure of the song has been all along with elements threading through and resolving out only to return transformed to highlight the vastness of the composition and thus an apt metaphor for the title. A little mystery never hurt anyone yet when the immensity of the world outside one’s immediate context can seem terrifying but managing that truth of not being the center of that universe as a species much less as a person is probably healthy and one need not let that initial shock overwhelm you. Listen to “It’s OK to Be Afraid of the Universe” on YouTube.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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