Yards & Gods

Nonreturner’s first proper full length was recorded between Winter of 2007 and Fall of 2008, and released (officially, at least) on Yards & Gods, a DIY arts co-op on October 4, 2008.  Free streaming and download below. Here’s what some people said about it:

What’s initially striking about Columbia, Mo.’s Nonreturner is how their music reverberates with the stately, supernatural beacons of the world’s iconic mysteries—this could be a perfect soundtrack for a trip to a Mayan pyramid or a voyage through the Bermuda Triangle. This sense of adventure carries over to the antipodean motif woven into their musical DNA. Their self-titled debut exudes a sense of having just washed up on dry land after being launched from a distant, austral beach. It’s a more tumultuous take on the epic, textured voyages of Priest=Aura-era Church or the ragged, woolly pop sense of The Chills. Concurrently, Nonreturner plot a northerly journey to a deep, dark English winter, zeroing in on the icy electronica at which the Brits excel. “Horse & Buggy Days” hovers above with the uneasy ineptitude of an off-course UFO, skittering with Squarepusher glitches and the byzantine layers of Radiohead’s Amnesiac. “The Awash” weds further Thom Yorke shenanigans to smashing, diving psychedelic rock straight out of the Verve’s debut. Meanwhile, “Black Clouds” tosses up for grabs a squashed-up packet of wiry, crunchy guitar, cramming the stretched out drones Mark Kozelek would admire into a four-minute package that belies its expansive atmosphere.

RIYL: Radiohead circa Kid A and Amnesiac; The Church; a rock-n-roll Autechre, if such a thing dared to exist; The Verve’s first two LPs; the busy three way intersection of psychedelia, indie rock, and IDM

-Mike Rengel, PLAYBACK:stl

The Nonreturner opens with the moody “Awash,” a drifting, ominous track with Radiohead waves lingering in its atmosphere. It paves the way for the fuzzy electronic OM of “The Horse and Buggy Days” and the meditative drone of “Black Clouds.” The introspection breaks apart with “Sock Hops” and “Ex-Parte Til You Puke,” two tracks suggestive of a Built to Spill reincarnation. “Agoraphobia” is a pulsating, menacing heartbeat breathing life into the following two tracks, “Wake Up Underwater” and “Mysterious Occurrence at the Ice Cream Social,” which distort and swirl like the messy thoughts of My Bloody Valentine.  The album ends in a state of blissful nirvana with “Oh My My” and its ambient hidden track, achieving overall transcendence with a mindful awareness of pure sound. Without fully fleshing itself into a specific form or genre—it’s a little bit ambient, a little bit shoegaze, a little bit indie-pop—, The Nonreturner reaches a sort of oneness with all music.

-Tina Roselle, A Ravenous Horde

For this recording, Nonreturner is John-Paul McFarland, Logan Epps, Michael Hopkins, and Zach Biri.

1. Awash
2. The Horse and Buggy Days
3. Black Clouds
4. Sockhops
5. Ex-parte Til You Puke
6. Agoraphobia
7. Wake Up Underwater
8. Mysterious Occurrence at the Ice Cream Social
9. Oh, My My

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