Review: Graffiti Welfare juggles loss and time with ‘Revolving Shores’ album
The synth master explores grief and time on latest album.
George Lattimore digs his fingernails into wondrously synthy soundscapes. Known onstage as Graffiti Welfare, the Denver-based craftsman contextualizes loss, grief, and anxiety through the perceptions of and relationship to time. Stars expand and contract overhead, with Lattimore using such cosmic processes to forge his own excursion through the depths of humanity. Revolving Shores feels untethered to the ground, yet twists its gnarled roots through mankind’s self-made earth. It’s in part synthetic but possesses all the attributes of emotionally-electric work. It’s bound to move the spirit in ways one will never expect.
With the first rays of “To Be It,” Lattimore encases the listener in a hypnotic catacomb. Synths dance and ricochet off one another into star-lit patterns. “When I try to explain what I mean by digging a sound, I suddenly realize that I’m not really saying anything. And yet there are states of consciousness in which you can listen to sound and realize that that is the whole point of being alive,” Alan Watts’ voice pokes through the haze, ripped from The Inevitable Ecstasy, Part 15: The Meaningless Life. “Just to go with this particular energy manifestation that is happening right at this moment. To be it. The whole world is the energy playing at doing all this. Like a kaleidoscope, jazzing.”
Therein lies the thesis of Lattimore’s work. Revolving Shores is a vast collection of kaleidoscopic colors pieced together into a vibrant, affecting mosaic. Watts’ words haunt the rest of the record, from the silky serenity of “Just Follow” to the cathedral-sized “Missing the War.” Each moment captures a fragment of the human experience. Lattimore gives even the smallest details enough weight to reverberate in your skull. The echoes continue over the eardrums and out the other side, fluttering up to the heavens. You’re left forever changed afterward.
“DejaBlue” throbs with a hip-hop heartbeat, decorated with celestial synthwork and Lattimore’s soft cooing. Where “Good News” pumps the blood full of adrenaline, “Nothing Ever Changes” rinses the ears with a babbling brook intro and its gummy melodic intonation. There’s something cathartic in the way Lattimore laces up his tracks. He either squeezes every emotion from your fibers, or you simply melt away into his watercolor world. There is no in-between.
What Graffiti Welfare has mastered on Revolving Shores is nothing short of magnificent. 10 tracks ebb and flow with the passage of time, literally as you listen to the record. It’s a small window of time that one sacrifices both to make and to appreciate art. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Lattimore’s work is worth it.
