Horizons/East exemplifies art as a work of recognition — the human task of perceiving oneself amid details, disasters, and blessings as a relentlessly relational phenomenon among others.

To emerge from a global pandemic with a renewed sense of situational awareness, hard won insight, and a new album is the kind of move we’ve come to expect from Thrice over the last twenty years. With Horizons/East, Dustin Kensrue and his bandmates address, with candour and courage, the fragile and awkward arrangements that pass for civilization, while inviting us to dwell more knowingly within our own lives. Without surrendering any of the energy and hard edge of their previous albums, they’ve given us a profoundly meditative work which serves as a musical summons to everyday attentiveness.

Since forming Thrice with guitarist Teppei Teranishi, bassist Eddie Breckenridge, and drummer Riley Breckenridge in 1998, Kensrue has never been one to back down from a mental fight. Horizons/East communicates comfort with uncertainty, it’s uncertainty as the beginning of wonder. Not knowing something for certain can occasion a blossom, an opportunity, as opposed to a dead end.