Normal
Lullabies and fairy tales can possess certain qualities that belie
their gentle names, and might well inspire sleepless nights as opposed
to sweet dreams. The former speak of helpless, cradle-bound babies
falling to their certain doom, and anyone who has glanced through the
original stories of the brothers Grimm knows that their name was a
rather apt description of their stories' conclusions. It's amazing how
a soothing voice or an impeccable melody can assuage the rather irksome
feel of the gothic subject matter. On 'Seven Years of Seven Limbs,'
Fern Knight (comprised of ex-Difference Engine members Margie Wienk and
Mike Corcoran) has given us a collection of their own folktales that
play with darker shades of storytelling imbued with a fairy tale like
sense of wonder. From the outset of "She Who Was So Precious to You,"
we find a sparse arrangement of acoustic guitar and strings that are
lit up by Wienk's gorgeous vocals, like a shaft of sunlight peeking
through a dark thicket of dead trees. The lyrics are foreboding and
presents us with the first of many moments of grotesque beauty, "If the
full moon won't illuminate us / if the wine glass won't even stay full
/ if the wolf won't eliminate you / then I will." It is a series of
images so vibrant, so enticingly conveyed that you're pulled in; and
yet they are also full of malice. This malevolence is undercut somewhat
by a desolate feeling, as in "Chelyabinsk," which gives off a sense of
great distance and overwhelming loss that has settled into fear and
regret. In "Boxing Day", Wienk dons a red riding hood, declaring "I
don't think it's okay to be going downhill with you" to whoever or
whatever serves as the big bad wolf in her emotional dark forest. The
song begins with the twang of a slide guitar, however over the course
of its seven minutes, it loses the plot and begins to drift off of its
structure finally dissolving into a wispy collection of church bells,
alarm calls, and telephone ringers before segueing into the rain and
street noise intro of "Mover Ghost." In the waning minutes of the disc,
the metaphor and imagery of the wolves, the dark forests and watchful
moons begins to fade away in favor of more literal expressions of the
conflicts they embodied. "Make your record of it / You're such an easy
target / mark those days off on your wall." The distance is now
measured in time, not symbolized by some far off Russian outpost.
'Seven Years of Severed Limbs' closes with the stunningly beautiful
"Dog Named Summer," loaded full with an impeccable melody and more
soaring vocals that shape the scene of that golden yellow summer sun
dipping below the rooftops, the heaviness of the heat and the method of
your movements. Fern Knight draws a slow story, one that makes for an
excellent tale that explores those winding forest paths and the things
that lie hidden between the lines
samples:
