"Harmlessness," the Epitaph debut for The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, ranges from the hushed folk of opener "You Can't Live Here Forever" to the epic, grandiose "Mount Hum" - spanning the bedroom pop of the band's salad days to the sweeping scope of 2013's "Whenever, If Ever," and beyond. Founded by guitarist/singer Derrick Shanholtzer-Dvorak, guitarist/singer Tyler Bussey and bassist Josh Cyr in 2009 in the post-industrial mill town of Willimantic, CT, TWIABPAIANLATD's early records were atmospheric, impressionistic tone-poems, balanced somewhere between the twilit emo of American Football and Christie Front Drive and the pensive, mood-heavy post-rock of The Appleseed Cast and Yo La Tengo. The music was often free-form, as was the band's roster, adding guitarists (Greg Horbal and Chris Teti), keyboardists (Katie Dvorak), vocalists (David Bello) and periodic collaborators (spoken-word artist Chris Zizzamia). TWIABPAIANLATD has thus become something of a collective, expanding to nearly a dozen performers or condensing down to a core five or six. The band cites Bedhead, Don Caballero, Sun Kil Moon and Mewithoutyou as influences - all artists that have approached the art of making albums as a collective enterprise. Written as a group, "Harmlessness" finds the band developing some of its very best songs, even as certain tracks sprawl and stretch into abstract shapes.