A gripping conceptual exploration of growing up and various life stages, Music For Imaginary Friends is the new album from The Farewell Step. The project of Mario Bisignani excels with a dynamic instrumental rock prowess, set amidst tonal variety reflective of childhood and adolescent experiences — from personal awakenings to inner turmoil. Specifically, each track imparts the role of an imaginary friend; their roles as companions, with each possessing a different personality and role, bolsters a narrative that proves relatable and impactful. Bisignani — who wrote, played, mixed, and composed every note on the album — thoroughly impresses with a successful conceptual aim amidst an admirable DIY ethos.
“Denti / Secret Hideout” commences the album with climactic vigor, emitting crisply trickling guitars and pit-pattering percussion as a sense of discovery and wonderment is conveyed. Twangy guitar work and steady percussion build enjoyably, shifting to a space-y intrigue past the four-minute mark; the bass-ier presence here feels representative of a personal shift, perhaps representing the realization of the world’s daunting complexities. “Antiblues” follows with a similarly compelling range, driving resonating guitar and rhythmic interplay into a delectably haunting mid-point, where jangling guitars and the absence of percussion strut a contemplative spaciousness. The strong opening one-two punch enthralls in its audible depictions of personal realizations as one journeys from blissfully unaware to emotive curiosity.
One of the album’s harder-rocking efforts, “Sull’erba” comes aptly as the album approaches a mid-point; the heavy guitar distortion and textured tonal switch-ups swell with invigorating momentum, strutting a confident energy indicative of greater personal freedoms. Whereas the first two tracks’ imaginary friends exuded a more tactful salutations, “Sull’erba” rouses in its exhilarating call to traverse the unsettling and unknown. “The Salamander’s Lair” comes next, and brings us back into more tranquil introspection; the twangy guitars craft a nocturnal atmospheric pull, sounding like the calm after a storm, as one reflects on personal experience.
Music For Imaginary Friends concludes powerfully as well, with two tracks that continue to emphasize an eclectic structural traversal. “Ultrafilters” navigates synth-y hypnotics and blistering guitar energy alike, into a brooding shade of post-punk in the middle. Meanwhile, album finale “A Seventy-Year-Old Summer” immerses with its variety of sparsely haunting engrossment and thunderous waves of distortion — feeling like the ending of adolescence, as one experiences both moments of quaint reflection and a rousing, exhilaration heaviness of emotions. Music For Imaginary Friends is a conceptually artful, melodically enveloping success from The Farewell Step.
