There’s beauty in taking time. Battle Ave know this well, and they use it to wondrous effect on their sophomore album, Year Of Nod. They cherish the slow, epic buildup. It’s a little bit like life in that way — how we are the sum of our experiences, not just a fleeting moment of joy or anger or sadness. It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. For both the good and the bad. Year Of Nod is a patient record, made up of immense escalations and diminutive fadeouts and, for almost an hour, the upstate New York band explore a cloudy landscape of emotional peaks and valleys. All of this is pinned to Jesse Alexander’s wobbly, emotive voice that betrays enough vulnerability to make you feel at ease. He examines the hard truths — “How can something come from nothing?” he asks on “Solar Queen”; “Everybody knows that they’ve got problems, and everybody knows that they ain’t saints” on “Helen” — and makes you feel like everything will be OK. Battle Ave have made an album that you can wrap yourself up in when you’re hurting, and that’s the best kind. Listen to the whole thing below.

Year Of Nod is out 5/5 via Seagreen Records.