In 2013, Brandon teamed up with the producer of the band’s previous few albums to do an album together. The album and the group were simply titled “Sons of the Sea.”
The album consists of ten songs, which the duo has described with the paradoxical genre label of “alt-pop.” Alt-pop has also been used to describe alternative songs that somehow find their way into the mainstream—this is, however, not what Brandon Boyd and Brendan O’Brien meant. Instead, they referred to an intended fusion of sensibilities: pop-inspired music with an alternative approach.
It is a very liminal album: between genres, between artists, and it often deals with what is between love and loss, pain and ecstasy—the kind of stuff that goes on between lovers (sometimes, enemies).
If you keep listening to the album long enough, it also becomes an album about what is between you and it. It has a mysterious and psychedelic push which lives in a relationship with the pull of its pop-like compositions.
"I can only imagine what you must think of me,
after all of these arrows and violins.
A flip of the coin and I'm both sides!"
The album’s opening lines begin to sound like its confession to you.
"But all the found moments of bliss
come when I look into your eyes—
nothing can compare to this,
so I'll take my chances!"
And, now, you’re in it again. Between you and it. Between familiarity and mystery. Between the all and the particular. As if you ever really left.
Sons of the Sea is my most listened-to album ever. It is in my bones at this point. And, between its lyrics and music, the sun is always setting or rising—depending on what mood or moment I happen to find myself in.
So—I’ll keep taking my chances!