In the interim between the releases of 2015's Love Songs for Robots and 2019's Wave, Patrick Watson lost his mother and ended a long-term relationship. The Canadian singer/songwriter and film composer's music has always hewed towards the spectral, but with Wave, his eighth full-length effort, Watson has crafted his most incorporeal collection of songs to date. Built on themes of loss and uncertainty, the ten-track set parses the hushed in-between moments of suffering and crystallizes them into unambiguous declarations of intent. "I never thought you'd ever really be gone" confides Watson on the billowing soft-rock opener "Dream for Dreaming." It's a sentiment that receives frequent callbacks, both lyrically and sonically, throughout Wave's just-under-40-minute runtime, with every undulating swell of strings and cascading melody suggesting the treading of water. The aptly named "Melody Noir" plays out like a procedural, with Watson pleading "tell me where the wind is blowing cause that's where the music's going" in a falsetto that gets increasingly despondent as his quarry pulls further and further away. Mid-album highlight "Broken" builds to a dizzying and cathartic crescendo, but not before coming to terms with the pain that's inflicted on both parties during the mirthless days that precede a breakup. There are some glitchy electronic beats and questionable structural turns during the album's back half that feel a little bit out of place, but the overall vibe remains one of deep and heavy existential pain. Wave is an acutely overcast album, but Watson's gift for melody, narrative lucidity, and retro-pop sensibilities help to keep things more melancholic than maudlin. ~ James Christopher Monger, Rovi

1		Dream for Dreaming
2		The Wave
3		Strange Rain
4		Melody Noir
5		Broken
6		Turn out the Lights
7		Wild Flower
8		Look at You
9		Drive
10		Here Comes the River

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