OAKHANDS • A Circle with Many Centres • 12"EP

This Charming Man Records

The title of Oakhands’ new EP, “A Circle with Many Centers,” is both a reference to a short story by Haruki Murakami and an acknowledgment by the band that life and emotions cannot be neatly dissected and overanalyzed as they attempted on their previous album, “The Shadow Of Your Guard Receding.” Instead, emotions must simply be experienced and lived, and personal conflicts are far more interconnected and universal than we often care to admit.

At the root of all interconnected life questions lies the theme of depression, which permeates and suffocates all emotions. It is an inescapable topic, both socially and individually, and deeply relevant to the zeitgeist. Depression — the great adversary of all feelings, or the great absence of them — cannot be neatly analyzed; it simply exists. On this EP, it stands in contrast to the kaleidoscope of emotions explored on their debut album, resisting all attempts at analytical explanation.

“A Circle with Many Centers” can therefore be seen as a continuation, response, or even refutation of their debut. That album explored personal emotions with almost manic precision, lyrically and analytically, inspired artistically (not scientifically) by Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions.

In a sense, “Circle with Many Centers” can also be read as a late-coming-of-age record — a post-adolescent reflection on what it really means to grow up around the age of 30, a late personal Sturm & Drang, and the recognition of the root of all personal conflict: depression.