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Listened to it about ten to twenty times now. My thoughts:

"Life Somewhere Else" picks us up where the first Isidore record dropped us off some years ago - in a cosy cottage near the warm, deep waters of Isidore Sound, where we could listen to the first album again and again and again. It's like only a few days have past since then, therefore the new record and me, we just say "hello" to each other briefly and then immediately engage in aural communcation. It's all there again: the homogeneous, distinctive and recognizable sound, the atmosphere, the motifs. But there's more as well, because the new record doesn't simply repeat the first one's ideas. It takes a tiny little steps forward, staying on known ground firmly but also stretching beyond it at the same time.

As a whole, the new album seems a bit more coherent than the first one but I can't tell exactly why. "The Privateer" is a good opener and you know immediately who you're listening to. Then on it goes to the title track "Life Somewhere Else", which resembles Priest=Aura's "Witch Hunt" partly. I often can't help mixing in some lyrics from "Witch Hunt" in my mind, or expecting its chorus "Waaaaaake up baaaaaby..." to start. But nevertheless, "Life Somewhere Else" is a fantastic song with its own character, despite all similarities to "Witch Hunt". The next one, "Song Of The City", again is a song standing on the shoulders of another song. This time it's "One for Iris Doe" from Ididore 1, because the choruses are pretty similar. But again, this doesn't shade the quality of the song. I think I like "Song of the City" even better than "One for Iris Doe". The next songs are almost all very well done, sonically switching between some slow-mo, ethereal songs, some more uptempo ones with a smile on their face and a few songs with more rock or darker elements. Stand-out tracks from the middle part of the album are the rocking "Recoil" and the pychedelic "Oh My Sky" (reminding me of the Remindlessness album).

"Just Dust" is the only song that I wasn't able to connect to so far, though it's not a bad song and I like the idea of doing a little shift in the flow of the record with this more rocking and more experimental song.

In the end the record loses some of its momentum with "Readymade" and "Song For The Moon". Both are good songs but somehow I get distracted too easily when they are running. After that, however, the two last songs build up a killer album ending. "The Headlight Child" is probably the best song of the record, and "You Will Remain" beautifully ends the record in three-four time.

Sometimes I imagine that David Neil and Mr. Isidore must have been sitting on a bench next to each other once, exchanging stories about songwriting and boxes full of musical notes. Look at "Recoil", for example: if the 5th dimension would be "music", then some physicist would certainly be able to come up with a formula that proves this song's slight connection to The Wilderness Years in spacetimemusic.

All in all, "Life Somewhere Else" is a wonderful album which gets better and better with each listen. Listen often, listen with full attention. You will be rewarded.