Memory Lane

Lost Years works in the more melancholic quarter of the synthwave map, and "Memory Lane" lives up to its title with an almost architectural commitment to the specific emotional coloring of retrospect. The production is hazier than most of the genre — high frequencies softened, the overall image slightly blurred as though memory were doing the processing rather than clarity, which makes the listener do more imaginative work to fully apprehend what is happening. Pad chords sustain long enough to create genuine pools of harmony that the melody moves through rather than across, and the rhythm section, where it appears, serves the atmosphere rather than driving it. The nostalgic register here is specific: not the nostalgia of triumph or even of simple good times, but the kind that acknowledges loss as the very thing that makes the recalled moment precious. Emotionally the track creates a container for that experience without forcing a particular content into it, which is the function of the best mood music — it provides the texture of feeling without specifying its object. "Memory Lane" works best during the in-between hours, neither late enough to be properly cinematic nor early enough to be properly functional, where the mind moves naturally toward inventory and the heart toward what inventory costs.