Has it been nearly ten years since Canada’s own Half Past Four put out a new album after their 2013 release Good Things and their 2016 EP Land of the Blind? The answer is Yes. This band can do no wrong when it comes to complexity, surrealism, avant-rock, wacky time signatures, and delivering one punch after another by getting down to business of the progressive genre. It’s time to give them a welcoming hand shake by their return with their latest release for 2025, Finding Time.
For Kyree Vibrant, Dmitry Lesov, Igor Kurtzman, Boris Kalantyr, and Roberto Bitti, they offer six compositions by returning to base and offering us a mind-bending structure to see what they’ve been working on. From the soaring turned metallic ride by scanning for new lifeforms on a different planet with ‘Far Away’ to the opening nod of William D. Drake’s ‘The Mastodon’ from The Rising of the Lights on the opening track ‘Tomorrowless’, Half Past Four have been very, very busy with a great sense of unbelievable results.
Hearing that, its almost like going back and listening to the first track and thinking to yourself, “What? What did they just do now? Let me go back and listen to it again”. For me, it was the same thing when I first heard William D. Drake’s music back in 2011 on Sid Smith’s Podcasts from the Yellow Room. And that’s just showing how a band like Half Past Four did their research, very well.
The ascending staircase of a celebration with this bossa-nova groove turned darker themes around grave sites on ‘Shake Your Head’. The shrieking bluesy guitar effects, organ-like delay reverb sound, and jazzy piano structures, it becomes a dance they’ve done in the midsection to get your blood pumping.
‘Igguana’ will make you want to go back and pull out of the first two studio albums of Oakland-based band MoeTar’s music as Kyree tips her hat to Moorea Dickason as she carries on her footsteps to make sure they get some notice in the spiritual journey of finding your own true self. After the first five tracks, Half Past Four take a breather and delve into the sombering ballad ‘Branches’.
It has this waltz-like atmosphere in its 3/4-time signature as you can vision Kyree singing this song in the middle of this abandoned mansion that has collected dust for centuries as the ghost of the past and present have come to give one final dance as it changes another time signature then back into 3/4 once more. There are the Kate Bush influences that hits you hard as Half Past Four pays tribute to the goddess herself.
Once it reaches the high note, the last section of the piece is the band delving deeper and pouring their heart out into some Floydian approach as Boris, Igor, and Roberto, walk into elements of A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell into one giant form of a circle, ready to be closed.
The closing track ‘Underbelly’ is where things get down and funky with some approaches of Led Zeppelin’s ‘When the Levee Breaks’ and tidal-waving effects with its ‘60s organ attack. Kyree’s whispering vocal line of the closing composition, then delivering a sermon and tackling themes about corruption like you’ve never heard it before.
Out of this world, in your face, and down to the bone, Finding Time has proven to be a stick of dynamite, ready to explode and welcoming Half Past Four back with open arms to deliver more ideas for them to explore in the years to come. And this is only just the beginning.
