Don't ask me why -- perhaps it was the band photo -- but I was expecting emo, so Northvia's instrumental rock was a pleasant surprise. I was even happier to learn that the group's take on their chosen genre wasn't another amps-to-eleven, cacophonous-climax-laden post-rock plod; Northvia definitely aren't playing with a new box of crayons, but they've made an effort to do something different with the colors.
"Rebirth", the EP's two-part opener, is particularly laudable. "Part 1" pairs a trebly Eastern lead with a sinuous rhythm, flexing through a noodle-intensive melody, then building to a white-noise-covered peak. This duly subsides, emptying into "Part 2", where a dreamy keyboard intro and a driving bassline fuel a cold, melodic guitar line borrowed from late-eighties goth. It's almost prog, almost gloomy, almost a sci-fi movie soundtrack, but bigger than any of those; you'll find all the resonance of a barn-burning Kinski song, without the guitar-battering frenzy.
"Maya (Misperception)" is more predictable, at least at first -- a languid post-rock meditation that seems to be going nowhere 'til a blissful little melody tears free of the mix and seizes control of the song, soaring into the peaks and valleys of a sustained, blissful climax. "Avidya (Ignorance)" rises from the previous tune's ashes, but leans too heavily on repetition, and its modest payoff seems wholly gratuitous; out of all of Northvia's tunes, this one seems most in need of a vocalist to drag the brooding, bookish melodies somewhere we haven't been before. "Ananda (Bliss)", with its breakfast tempo and tacked-on crescendo, closes the EP on a disappointingly bland note.
Fortunately, familiarity needn't breed wholesale contempt for Northvia. They're definitely working within a familiar framework, and routinely fall back on tricks we've all heard before, but they still have a few surprises for us ("Rebirth (Part 2)" in particular). They just need to get the balance right: less of the comfy-chair jazz-jamming, more of the unique sonic textures and subversive melodies.
