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Alexander Tucker, "Furrowed Brow"
The new album by Alexander Tucker is pure bliss. I had high expectations of this release and they have been more than met. Taking his droning, folk improvisations further than before, Furrowed Brow is his best work yet. In the short time I’ve had this disc I’ve found it impossible to stop listening.
ATP Recordings
Tucker sounds like he’s following a tradition that has long been neglected, focusing not on ageless songs and ideas but on ageless feelings captured through his droning miasma of acoustic guitar and mandolin. Hanging around with Stephen O’Malley has obviously had an effect on him because, in addition to the pastoral sounding music, Tucker includes mighty downtuned riffs. Unlike Current 93 who have also recently been adding to their music guitars that belong more to the realm of doom metal than to folk, Tucker doesn’t use these sounds to turn the mood a blacker shade of apocalyptic. Furrowed Brow is anything but apocalyptic, it is hopeful sounding.
“You Are Many” kicks off the album in fine style. Multi-tracked acoustic guitars form a dense, rhythmic backing for a choir of Tuckers to sing over. The lyrics aren’t anything exceptional (“Words can’t be all these things we want to believe”) but the conviction with which Tucker sings them gives the words a lot of weight. He layers his voice and makes some fantastic sounding harmonies with himself; he does it so well it sounds like it is one otherworldly voice. When the mandolin solo erupts it brings a big smile to my face: this is a truly wonderful song. As Furrowed Brow continues it's clear that this opening song is in good company: each of the subsequent tracks are of a similar calibre, if not always of the same style. The next piece, “Superherder,” at first sounds like an Angels of Light outtake, Tucker’s strumming here is very reminiscent of Michael Gira’s style. Without warning a grindingly low and overdriven guitar line shatters the peace of the piece. The intense wall of acoustic guitars and doom-laden electric guitar eventually breaks and disintegrates into a drone.
It’s tiring but rewarding work listening to Furrowed Brow as some of the tracks sometimes sound a little similar to each other. I put this down to Tucker exploring various different looping and layering techniques using mostly the same instrumental palette. It all sounds exceptional as he has obviously worked hard on this album. One especially impressive display of on the fly looping and manipulation is found on “Broken Dome.” What starts off sounding like mobile phone interference turns out to be Tucker’s voice. As the piece progresses I come to recognize it from his recent performance at the Supersonic festival. This, and the couple of others tracks that sound familiar, sounds an awful lot better in the studio. The pressures of playing this music live (plus the fact that he had equipment problems during his performance) mean that in the more relaxed confines of the studio the songs can come to life properly.
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