Packaging

Perhaps it was the exhausting grind of modern music-making, or some related epiphany sprouted from the subconscious loam, that led Seattle’s Daniel Lyon and Denver’s Daniel “Connor” Birch to name their collaborative project Packaging. But while the name (and the name of their debut album) may connote a cynical mindset, the music they make does not. Instead, it’s a passionate merging of two distinct voices: the krautrock chug and psychedelic swirl of Lyon’s Spirit Award and the electronic grandeur of Birch’s Flaural, with a light dusting of bristling self-awareness sprinkled on top.

Though the duo currently live in different states, Lyon and Birch originally bonded during their respective bands’ first tour in 2016. Ever since then they stayed in each other’s orbit, mutually contributing to records and staying in such constant contact that a creative collaboration seemed fated. In 2022 the pair started a long-distance recording process that involved several plane tickets to Denver and a handful of contributors including Luke Temple (Here We Go Magic), Ash Reiter (Sugar Candy Mountain), James Barone (Beach House), and Andy Rauworth (Gauntlet Hair). Eerily to everyone involved, a serendipity seemed to settle on the project: no challenges, no problems, just uncanny coincidences and intuitive creation.

The seeds of songs soon flourished into a self-titled sound garden, one that Lyon and Birch encourage you to experience whilst traveling in the physical (or metaphysical) world. Transit is a series of evanescences, the simple pleasures of the journey often clashing with the urgency of the destination. Fittingly, recurring concepts throughout Packaging – the edge of the water, the Texas desert, the empty terminal – mark the miles, forming little permanents amid the shifting moods and fleeting scenery. On five-minute pulse-pounder “Running Through the Airport,” the “routine malaise” of the workweek is counterbalanced by the similarly restless buzz of the flow state. “In My Pocket” takes stock of what remains after a lifetime of ephemeral memories and lost possessions as Lyon’s synth replicates a receipt printer. “Didn’t Wanna Stay” is itself a study in change: life yielding to death as people move measuredly through its chapters.

The strength of Packaging lies in the ways its members push each other to new places. Lyon, who takes lead vocals, is used to obscuring his vocals with effects in his own band. Here, urged by Birch, he lets his low, comparatively unadorned falsetto carry an uncharted emotional weight. Birch is right there to back him up, sculpting a bruised synth to lead the quietly devastating “On Holiday” and layering ponderous aquatics underneath “Say What You Need.” Lyon, meanwhile, lends his gift to turn any song into a sleek driving monster; the introductory “Always Calling” and its hefty lockstep pace is momentum incarnate, each layer relentlessly building into a pensive crescendo that ends without resolving.

There’s a reflexive irony in choosing to name yourself after the surface level. Both Birch and Lyon are lifelong musicians, people who understand both the vibrancy inherent in a life creating music and the enervating miasma that settles as you choose to lead it. Plenty of their peers find their hard work ignored if it isn’t packaged properly, and yet the energy it takes to make that package often sucks the enjoyment out of the work, the only reason nowadays to undertake it. Packaging, then, is a flipping of the script, a way to reclaim that joy through mutual trust and the spark of imagination. With the fruits of their bond, they hope to soundtrack your own movement

• from locale to locale, past to future – until one day you finally reach its end.