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Boduf Songs, "Lion Devours the Sun"
The cover art of Mathew Sweet's second Boduf Songs release for Kranky hints that this could be a sequel. The design is of a similar style, but the flowers and people of the old Victorian prints are replaced with more foreboding images. Follow a trail of bread crumbs down a shadowy path into the woods depicted on the cover, and there's that scary thrill of being enveloped by trees, not knowing what will be encountered. The air is so fresh, the ground so soft, but once inside, there are serpents, flies, and poison.
Picking up a bit where "Claimant Reclaimed" left off, Sweet begins the album on familiar ground. It opens with finger-picked rhythms and submissive vocals, taking the best parts of the Boduf Songs' style and elevating them a few notches. The music tends to be even more in line with the lyrical content than the last one, having a slightly darker edge. The visual and sonic imagery of the first track, "Lord of the Flies," is of tainted beauty, diseased sexuality, and evil to the core. Like the book from which this track culls its name, it points to the hidden natures within us all as human beings. An abstract sound of swarming flies comes and goes.
"Two Across the Mouth" enters murder ballad territory, the implied violence centering around burying one's past rather than an actual corpse, then hiding away "in a cabin in the pines," to escape and forget. It brings to the forefront more of an electric sound in its intro, complete with distortion, delay and subtle feedback of his trademark bowing. This track is definitely a highlight as the bowed sounds making perfect accents and backings to his plucked guitar and meandering vocal melody. One of the most elegant songs, "Great Wolf of No Tracks," waltzes along within Sweet's basic but perfect trio of elements: plucking, singing, and thoughtful, prayer-like lyrics. Both "That Angel Was Pretty Lame" and "Please Ache For Redemptive" employ some free-form playing and random sounds. In the latter, "all in this body balance and repose" is softly chanted, repeatedly, underneath bursts of hand-beaten drums and cymbol clatterings; a cyclical guitar part holds it all together.
Like a heartbeat or something tribal, "Green Lion Devours the Sun" starts with a deep and reverbed drum that subtly pounds throughout. It's interesting to note that Sweet entered music first as a drummer, and that drums and percussion take a definite back seat to guitar and melody with this project. However, rhythm is truly a grounding feature with Boduf Songs, both with his guitar playing style and some of his vocal phrasings. There is no strumming of chords anywhere. The picking patterns of "Fall of Cherry Blossom In Long Shadows of Twilight" drive the song, but its icing lies in the second layer of singing with different words behind the main vocals, as well as in the birds and fireworks at its end. A delicate and wonderful harmony emerges on "27th Raven's Head (Darkness Showing Through the Head of the Raven)," maybe clueing us in to explorations on future releases. Whereas the last one ended so beautifully and perfectly, leaving me wanting moremoremore, this one ends with a lacklustre dirge, "Bell For Harness." At over nine minutes long, the music is very redundant, as well as extremely derivative. I've listened to the entire album several times in full over the course of a few weeks, and as much as I enjoy the rest of it, I just can't get into the last song. But considering it's the only thing close to a flaw on the entire album, it's easy to let it go.
Sweet is a man further refining his style, a step deeper into realizing a completely honest and genuine identity in music. The vocals are more seasoned, the lyrics are more developed, and the embellishments to the guitar framework are stronger and more interesting. Lion Devours the Sun demands a headphone listen while sitting directly in the sun—a blanket in the park or in a favorite room by the window will do. To me this is not one of those dark late night Kranky releases. Have some coffee or a cuppa on a Saturday afternoon, forego the nighttime weed-stoked spin, just this once.
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