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Diane Cluck, "Boneset"
It has been a very long time since a formal Diane Cluck album has surfaced, as even the collages/odds-and-ends collection Monarcana dates from nearly a decade ago.  However, she has been far from idle during her "hiatus," touring regularly and releasing an irregular trickle of excellent new work through both a tour CDr and her ongoing (and ambitiously mis-named) "Song-of-the-Week" project.  Of course, the downside to that piecemeal approach is that the bulk of these new pieces (and their arrangements) will already be quite familiar to devoted fans, but those who have not been closely monitoring Diane's recent activity have a couple of her finest songs ever awaiting them.
Diane's work has undergone quite a significant evolution since her last major statement (2005's Countless Times), which is certainly to be expected–people can change a lot in 9 years and Diane is no exception.  For the most part, however, the transformation from Countless Times-era Cluck to Boneset-era Cluck is entirely a positive one, though I admittedly miss her early intensity, vocal layering, and playful sense of experimentation.  In their place, however, is a much stronger emphasis on songcraft and consistency: there are no spontaneous one-take performances or sketches to be found on this latest effort, just 8 complete, well-crafted songs that have been gradually distilled into their current states through months and months of touring.  Diane has always been an amazing songwriter and performer, but now it seems like she is quite a bit more comfortable with those roles.
While some of Cluck's earlier fire, ragged off-the-cuff charm, and chills-down-my-spine rawness may be gone, the more organic and earthy aesthetic embodied by Boneset is not entirely a softening of Cluck's edges, as her lyrics are just as personal, poetic, idiosyncratic, articulate, wise, tender, and moving as ever.  The most disquieting of the batch is one of the earlier pieces, "Content to Reform," where she addresses the EP's primary theme of cyclical death and rebirth in particularly unflinching sharp-focus ("I die and I die, sloughing off cells....everything spends out its day and then its content will reform until it breaks again.").  As bleak as that sounds (it is bleak), it ultimately comes across as a perversely joyous and eerily beautiful piece, owing largely to its moaning cello accompaniment and lilting vocal melody.
The album's other centerpiece is a relatively new song, "Heartloose" (the pieces are arranged in rough chronological order).  Again, Cluck is joined by cellist Isabel Castellvi, but "Heartloose" is considerably more propulsive and Romantic in theme than "Content."  To my ears, it easily stands among Cluck's best work, offering up great melody and lyrics that are absolutely heart-melting in their guilelessness, particularly the final verse ("And I have so much for you!  Do you know how I get shy to show you?").  Yet another fine piece is Boneset's darkly exotic closer, "Sara," which features an unusual stuttering melody; references to Hindu and Mesopotamian goddesses of destruction and the underworld, and lyrics like "her dirt rain dark down, my falling skin stripped so lonely."
If Boneset has a flaw, it is that there is too little of it.  Aside from containing only two truly new songs (the piano-based "Why Feel Alone" and the largely a capella "Not Afraid to Be Kind"), half of the songs hover around the 2-minute mark.  That latter trait inadvertently amuses me quite a bit, as it almost seems like Diane was hell-bent on perfectly adhering to Wire's famous 1977 Rules of Negative Self-Definition (no decoration; no chorusing out; keep to the point; when the words run out, it stops; etc.).  Though I am sure that Cluck crafted these pieces completely independently of advice from any aging post-punk luminaries, that aesthetic works just as well for her as it did for Pink Flag–Boneset is direct, distinctive, and powerful despite ostensibly treading genre territory that has been well-covered.  While it does not necessarily eclipse any of Diane's past triumphs (such as Oh Vanille), Boneset is most certainly still on the same level as them.  More importantly, it is a hugely welcome return for a singular artist that has been far too quiet for far too long.
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