“If I could take off this mask, will you laugh at me?” intones Mauro Remiddi—better known to the world these days as Porcelain Raft—on “Think of the Ocean”. Who hasn’t asked the same? The song lilts and curves with transcendent anxiety, the kind that’ll keep you staring at the sea, phone switched off, severed from the human world. The tempo’s carried by an insistent glitch while cellos, violins, and sickly guitars writhe in the foreground. But it’s Remiddi’s porous, glowing vocals that drive the whole thing home. After his last release, the instrumental Silent Speech EP, it’s all kinds of lovely to hear Porcelain Raft behind the mic again. The sound here is light, but it yearns hard.
“Think of the Ocean” is the first single off of Porcelain Raft’s upcoming album Permanent Signal, due out from Secretly Canadian on August 20.