Ragana – Unbecoming

I came across Ragana totally by chance. I’m pretty certain I can credit YouTube recommendations for this encounter. Anyhow, I saw a live video of this intriguing atmospheric doom duo and was impressed by both their music and its unpretentiousness and purity. So I was excited to discover their studio recordings and find that they already seemed to be getting quite some support. All editions of Unbecoming, their latest record, had sold out, and they’d been playing plenty of shows around the USA over the past few years.

Unbecoming is simple and raw. It’s like a children’s game turned serious. Ragana’s music is anything but polished and perfect. Sometimes it sounds broken, and that makes it feel so alive. It’s as if the band were playing right in front of you, in your own room. Unbecoming is dreamy and fragile, more an exploration than another artsy-fartsy concept somebody’s trying to force-feed you.

Nothing like that. Unbecoming lets you discover it on your own. So don’t be surprised if you get lost somewhere between its shoegaze-like passages, carried by simple, clean melodies and spacey drumming. Don’t scream when the music wakes you up by suddenly climaxing in a harsh black metal outburst or raw doom breakdown. Through it all, you’ll be lifted up by the duo’s voices.

That’s exactly how Ragana’s music works, and I find it perfect. First, it feels like staring into the stars. Then it grabs you and smashes you onto the floor, before voices appear to pick you up and scatter your whole being over… everything.

Unbecoming is perfect in its imperfections, its details, and its completely free form.