Hold on to your headphones because Frozen Inertia is here to shake things up with their latest album, Reflectivity.
This isn't just any old album; it's a genre-hopping, mind-bending, musical rollercoaster. Get ready to be whisked away into a world where jazz, blues, classical, and electronic sounds all mingle like it's a cosmic jam session. Seriously, it's a trip.
Frozen Inertia comes from two pretty different places—San Francisco, California, and Akron, Ohio—but Timothy Graves (on baritone guitar, bass, synths, and vocals) and Brad Palmer (rocking the drums, accordion, and keys) somehow make it work. Together, they’re all about pushing musical boundaries and blending sounds in ways that’ll have your ears doing double takes.
Reflectivity, which dropped on January 24th, 2025, is basically a kaleidoscope in album form. Each track is like stepping into another dimension, full of rich, cinematic soundscapes. Even when there are no lyrics, the music tells vivid stories. It’s like you can hear colors. Yes, I’m aware of how trippy that sounds, but trust me on this one.
Now, let’s talk about the crown jewel of the album: “The Northern Lights.” This track is a whole 10-minute epic, and it’s breathtaking. Abbey Road Studios and legendary producer Oli Morgan (yep, the guy who’s worked with The Beatles and Elton John) helped bring it to life. The song builds and swells like a symphony, perfectly capturing the wonder of, well, northern lights dancing in the sky. Just when you think it’s peaked, Grateful Dead’s Scott Guberman jumps in with a Hammond B3 organ solo that’ll send chills down your spine—the good kind.
Then there’s “Red Sky at Noon,” a haunting and deeply personal track. Inspired by the eerie, apocalyptic red skies during the California wildfires, this song hits home. It’s simple, powerful, and lingers with you long after it ends. You’ll feel the weight of that moment, trust me.
Seventeen guest musicians from around the globe lent their talents to this album. We’re talking big names like Tim Lefebvre (of Bowie’s Blackstar fame), jazz vocalists Dennis DeMille and Christopher Weeks, Juilliard-trained oboist Pablo O’Connell, and baritone saxophonist Lucas Sales. It’s like a musical world tour packed into one record.
And how could we not mention the wild card? Brad Palmer’s nine-year-old son co-wrote a track called “No One is Driving This Car.” It’s quirky, catchy, and surprisingly wise in that "kids say the darndest things" kind of way. You’ll be humming it for days.
In the end, Reflectivity doesn’t just want you to listen. It wants you to close your eyes, let go, and see where the music takes you. It’s an invitation to daydream, to feel, and to escape into something beautifully strange and new. So, are you ready for the ride? Because trust me, this is one journey you’re going to want to take.
The journey behind Reflectivity seems to be a deeply personal and eclectic one. What was the initial spark that inspired you to create this album, and how did your individual experiences shape the sound and themes you explored?
Musically, there were two initial sparks that created this album. The first was about a week after finishing our last album, “After the Circus,” our bass player, Ryan, asked me if I had any new music to play around with. We just wrote an album! So I was kind of out of ideas, but I didn’t want to break the creative momentum, so I sketched something out in a few hours, which later became “Dogs in Space”. From there, new song ideas just started to flow. The other spark was a new baritone guitar, which really opened up all kinds of ideas for new sounds.
Lyrically, some songs are personal, others are more abstract, and others have a sense of
humor. “The Northern Lights” music was nearly there, but I had no lyrics until I went to Iceland, then I wrote the whole thing after taking a run once I was back home. The process was so fast; it’s like I needed that experience to complete the song. I’ve also started writing songs based on titles; sometimes, a phrase will just emerge, and that determines where the song goes.
One specific example is “It’s Just the Beginning of Something New.” my mom appeared to me in a dream, said that phrase to me, and then jumped into the water and swam away. I don’t remember a lot of dreams, but that particular one was extremely vivid. The lyrics are about something completely different, but that sparked the idea for that song.
With such a diverse blend of genres, including jazz, classical, and electronic, how do you balance the experimental nature of the album while maintaining a cohesive sound? Was there a specific moment during production when everything “clicked” into place?
It’s a balance, but I like releasing a collection of work as opposed to one song at a time. So
even though the music styles vary, it needs to all work together, which is hard to pinpoint how that happens. I think the one thing that makes it “click” is when the sequence of tracks feels complete, if one feels out of place then it’s not right for the album. It’s definitely a bit of an art, but it’s also what determines when the album is done when it paints a complete picture sonically: a beginning, middle, and end.
The track "Red Sky at Noon" is inspired by the wildfires in Northern California, a devastating event. How did that experience influence the emotional tone of the song, and what was it like to translate that raw, real-world event into music?
There’s so many strong emotions in that track. The September 2020 wildfires were just tragic
and they occurred in the middle of the pandemic, you couldn’t go anywhere because of COVID, so you’re stuck at home, and on top of that, the Bay Area air quality was so poor that you couldn’t go outside for fresh air, and the sky was blood red all day - it felt like the world was ending. Since then, every year has been the hottest on record, and we’re witnessing “once in a lifetime” weather events over and over again.
Then after these tragic events are over, we seem to forget about it until the next one comes along. I don’t like writing tracks that seem preachy, so I tried to be as sensitive as I could with the lyrics. I wrote it in a major key, and I wanted it to sound as beautiful as I could. I think it has a bit of a dreamy 80’s vibe to it, I wanted it to be hopeful yet realistic - but it’s so sad to keep seeing this happen. The L.A. fires are so terrible, I hope for a quick restoration, such great memories there.
Your album features contributions from 17 incredibly talented musicians from all over the world. How did you decide who to collaborate with, and what do you think each guest brought to the table that elevated the album’s overall sound?
As far as how we decide who and how the contributions are made, there are only two of us in the band, but as we’re writing, we hear other things come up in the music. When we were younger, we’d just try to figure out how to make those sounds ourselves, or I’d try to sing the vocal part even though I was hearing another vocalist in my head, so the song never felt quite complete.
This time, we were really lucky to have so many incredible musicians on this album. We’ve
always had special guests, but this one really takes it to the next level. For example, “You Had No New Messages Today” started entirely as an abstract ambient electronic song, but as it progressed, there was this sound of an oboe that surfaced out of that music, but I needed an oboist that would be comfortable with experimental music. So I wrote a friend who plays classical oboe, and they introduced me to Pablo O’Connell, who was the perfect fit for what was needed in this song. A modern and historical oboist.
A slightly different example was I needed a bass part for “It’s just the beginning of something
new” and “Remember the Exit May Be Located Behind You.” I play bass, but I wasn’t right for
the part, and I was hearing an upright bass on one track, which I don’t own. I must have
reached out to four contacts I knew, and nothing was working out, so I needed to source a
session musician and was amazed to get a chance to work with Tim Lefebvre, who was the
bassist for David Bowie’s last album, Blackstar.
It was an honor to have him contribute to both the lightest and darkest tracks on the record, and he blew it out of the water! There are so many other examples and stories, but I’d need an afternoon to talk about all of them. I’m so grateful and thankful for all the amazing contributions in both the music and vocals on this album, it’s the collaboration that makes this record.
"The Northern Lights" is such a monumental piece, both musically and emotionally. Can you talk about what it was like to have the track stem-mastered at Abbey Road Studios with Oli Morgan? How did that experience help shape the final version of the song?
The Northern Lights is such a monumental piece, both musically and emotionally. Can you talk about what it was like to have the track stem-mastered at Abbey Road Studios with Oli Morgan? How did that experience help shape the final version of the song?
It was a dream and an honor to get a chance to walk into Abbey Road and have that song stem-mastered by Oli. There’s so much history in that building. I very much had a bit of “imposter syndrome” there, but everything aligned beautifully for it to work out: I was in London over the summer, the Northern Lights track was finished, and there was availability in the studio on the specific day I could go there.
Stem-mastering is really cool. It’s almost like having it mixed because they’re mastering
elements of the individual tracks or “stems,” so if the bass needs to be tweaked a bit, it can be — or if the vocals need a better EQ, it’s easy to fix.
With regular audio mastering, you can’t do that because you’re working with the final mix. Abbey Road is one of the few studios that offers this, so it was incredible to watch Oli work his magic on our song. It took the song to a new level. He just knew what to do to bring the best out of that track.