Safari Room – Actual Feelings

Chalk this one up to the power of compelling album art. The Actual Feelings EP from Safari Room depicts some gorgeously simple collage work from Abby McGuire that accurately sets the tone for the music within. That sounds like a stretch because the image itself is actually a diver falling through space in front of the moon but the music itself has an lightness and airy nature that would surely be required to float past the moon.

In all seriousness tho, the four song offering is filled with falsetto voices, often layered delicately, set against a wall of building guitars. It’s a deceptively simple presentation of pop songs with much more going on than one would expect in such a short run time; including but not limited to drum machines, samples, dance-y bass lines and space-y guitars. There’s that moon reference again.

If you’re going to dive in, start with “Antelope“, the track that the band deemed worthy of releasing as a single back in June, preceding the album.