The Soft Moon - Deeper (2015)

The voice of The Soft Moon has never been more clear and honest than it is on this record. With eerie, immersive tracks like the dogged "Far" and slow, beautifully melancholic "Wasting" (the first track written for Deeper), the album is a penetrating portrait of Vasquez as he wrestles thoughts of suicide, vulnerability and what it means to heal. By facing the most hopeless parts of himself without illusion and putting his past demons to bed, the creation of Deeper was an intense personal exploration of existence for Vasquez -- old wounds were forcibly opened, deep anger and paranoia were manipulated into song -- and he did not emerge unchanged. Deeper may have delivered Vasquez back to the waking world, but it willingly drags us further into The Soft Moon's dark, euphonic universe once more.