The scattered ashes are in place for Lost Trail (the project of Zachary and Denny Corsa). The husband and wife duo will soon turn their attention to a new project and a new chapter, closing the door on Lost Trail for good following a recent relocation to Memphis *.
A Retreat More Than A Surrender is another exceptional listen, where shades of the supernatural (or at least the unexplained) are concealed behind vines of ivy and a downpour of falling leaves. Lost Trail’s achingly beautiful music could be classed as an X-File. Visitations from beyond are only glimpsed at in a blinding flash of prismatic light.
If their music only spoke about one thing, it would be that there’s another world beyond this one, and sometimes the fragile fabric separating one dimension from the next tears apart. The music has an emotional gravitas, of detailed particulars like a sun-touched park lined with tall trees and tucked quietly away in a nonchalant suburb, of Saturday afternoon baseball and late night television. The billowing sheets of static are like alien invaders, and the presence of something else is always just out of sight. On “Lingering Just Outside Your Field Of Vision”, a haunted soul’s trapped in a light loop, and the glass never breaks. “Metallic Green Dodge Shadow” roams around the outskirts of a wood – their music’s embedded in the soil of the state, as much a part of the town as anything else, as other, physical matter. The worn material of an old constitution written in ink vs the very soul of the state and its current health.
The static roars and burns with the force of a rocket booster, the music like hazy, old footage of a space shuttle blasting off from Cape Canaveral and ascending to the stars. A Retreat More Than A Surrender does exactly that, and it’s a fitting send-off. Safe travels. (James Catchpole)
* Zachary and Denny Corsa’s new musical project is Nonconnah, which is named after Nonconnah Creek. Corsa writes…”it (the creek) runs through the entire southern part of the city, and its history is mysterious and strange. Perched on its banks was the Mall of Memphis, which is now replaced with eerie wastes of torn fencing and high-tension towers and tall weeds stretching away to the horizon. Nearby in 1980, a bridge over Nonconnah Creek collapsed, killing a motorist. One end of the creek is home to a hauntingly beautiful greenbelt trail through tangled marshlands, aswarm with dragonflies and crawling with wild blackberries”.
a closer listen 