7/10

There's this striking sense of arrival running through Faint Halos' self-titled album. What initially began as Paul Hashemi's solitary recording project has grown into a full Philadelphia band, and this new collection captures the moment that transformation becomes permanent. Five older songs are rerecorded alongside five new ones, but the real story is what happens when deeply introspective material is handed over to a group of musicians and allowed to become louder, looser and more alive.

Where earlier Faint Halos material leaned more heavily on layered production and orchestration, this new album puts the chemistry between Hashemi, bassist Miguel Padro, drummer Bill Hallinan and guitarist Matt Ciejka at the centre. Recorded organically at Miner Street Recordings, the songs feel more immediate and recognisably rock-driven, with only light synth embellishment around the core band sound.

'This Means Everything' opens the record by reaching towards the possibility of hidden order in the universe, setting up an album that repeatedly searches for meaning without pretending that meaning is easy to find. 'Disaster' turns that search inward, while 'I Don't Want to Know' pushes fear of separation into something far more urgent and combustible.

The band's reference points of The National and The War on Drugs make sense in the combination of emotional weight, classic songwriting and sweeping rock dynamics, but this new material feels most compelling when the performances begin to stretch beyond tidy structure.

There's also a sense that these songs have been changed by being played in rooms with other people. Connection has always been central to Hashemi's writing, and after returning to music following a 15-year absence to write about loneliness in an attempt to make others feel less alone, those songs no longer sound solitary.

By the time 'Honeybee' arrives, the album has almost moved towards an acceptance of impermanence and the fragile beauty that comes with it. Faint Halos once sounded like one person searching for connection. But now, they finally sound like they found it.