Album Review: Ixora by Copeland

After a six-year layoff from recording, and four years after staging a farewell tour, contemplative indie rockers Copeland reunited in the studio in 2014 to create a new studio album, Ixora. Featuring the group's original lineup of Aaron Marsh, Bryan Laurenson, Stephen Laurenson, and Jonathan Bucklew, Ixora (the name comes from a type of flowering plant common in Florida) finds Copeland embracing a more mature subject matter than they did on their early albums (as befits men in their mid-thirties), but with the same moody and thoughtful musical approach that marked their best-known work. Recorded at Marsh's studio in Lakeland, Florida, Ixora includes the songs "I Can Make You Feel Young Again," "Like a Lie," "Disjointed," "Lavender," "Have I Always Loved You?," and six others.

Full Review >>

A successful comeback from the Florida indie-rockers. Their sixth effort sees feels-rock stalwarts Copeland easing back into their groove for a first album since their return from hiatus earlier this year, and doing it with a familiar level of grace and beauty. Acoustic opener ‘Have I Always Loved You?’ is an appropriately ethereal re-introduction that chills with frontman Aaron Marsh’s breathy vocals and the strings on ‘I Can Make You Feel Young Again’ lend proceedings a grand, sweeping air for a short while, but this album sorely lacks the odd raise in tempo that would turn it from a good comeback into a great one.

Full Review >>