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For those raised on dream pop bands and space rock songs, Some Sweet Relief sounds somewhat timeless, a 40-minute offering of neo-psych gospel that's more polished, more promising, and altogether stronger than most of the band's contemporaries.
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Speck Mountain still have some distance to travel before they fill an album with such moments, so that whenever you hear their music, you think of them first rather than their influences. But this is only their second full-length, and it's a solid step in that direction.
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MojoDevelop the creepy incantations into songs and they might really grab some shirtfronts. [Jul 2009, p.107]
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Q MagazineNever straying far thereafter, it all makes for a heavily addictive, comfortably numbing kind of experience. [Jul 2009, p.131]
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It is a one-trick album and they spunk away their best song, the incantatory ‘Shame On The Soul’, right at the start, but the aforementioned trick is, at least, an affecting, and very occasionally gorgeous, one.
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While there are resemblances Spiritualized, what should be a slow burning record, white hot in its intensity, is laid to rest sounding rather limp and uninspired.
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Under The RadarA bit more variance in tempo, and this would be a remarkable step forward; absent that, it's still a warm and idyllic late-night piece. [Spring 2009, p.73]
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Some Sweet Relief is adrift in a sea of despondency, Balabanian's drawling vocals listless with discontent, the repetitive guitar lines striving for a Spiritualized-style hypnotism, but languishing instead in monotony.
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Psychedelia with a southern soul lean, it’s a seriously heady piece of music.
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Speck Mountain might have a great album in them; this one isn’t bad. But I hope that some day they get over themselves and really get down.
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Some Sweet Relief’s beauty starts to wear kind of thin on repeated listening.
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While Briedrick produces artful, not too noisy drones through vintage analog gear, Balabanian’s vocals have a distinctly soulful quality.
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There is something else weaving through all of this, that other mysterious thing that some great records have, that keeps you going back even while you know that whatever vocabulary you come up with, whatever modifier you hang on the album, will be inadequate.