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Strange Attractor, "Mettle"
For their second Strange Attractor album, Niels van Hoorn and Richard van Krusdijk enlist an array of guest voices, including those of David J, Graham Lewis of Wire, Tuxedomoon's Winston Tong, and Peter Christopherson's Threshold Houseboys Choir. This venerable cast of characters makes music that lingers in the shadows, like something overheard spilling from an unmarked speakeasy in a darkened alley.
The mix of acoustic instruments and electronics makes for a relaxed late-night vibe, one that's not terribly involved but doesn't quite stray into light jazz territory either. The music doesn't say much on its own but instead serves best as support for the many guest vocalists, whose personalities give the tracks definition. Graham Lewis makes "The Best Things Are Left Unspoken" one of the album's highlights, while David J comes up with the best lyrics on "Sleaze," in which he bemoans the city's vanishing seediness. Winston Tong gives his track a literary bent with the reading of his own vivid translation of Baudelaire's L'Invitation au Voyage. Dotted between the other guests, the Strange Attractor's live mainstay Marie-Claudine gets four songs of her own which give the album a sense of continuity.
The pair of abstract contributions don't serve the album quite so well. Richard Sinclair's "Loneliness Is a Crowded Room" is hazy and meandering. Similarly paced and fittingly named, Peter Christopherson's "Snail" also stagnates the album a bit. Perhaps the album's most chilly and somber track, it's also somewhat of a disappointment. Christopherson adds the vocal stylings of Nat and Tye of the Threshold Houseboys Choir, but they're so muted and glacial and the accompanying music is so minimal that the track seems at odds with the rest of the album. Enjoyable on its own, it seems a little out of place here.
Otherwise the album mostly succeeds. Van Hoorn and Van Kruysdijk's great backdrops in combination with the various personalities of their guests makes for songs that exude after hours mystery and decadence.
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