We have finally cleared out the backlog of great music and present some new episodes.
Episode 711 features music from The Jesus and Mary Chain, Zola Jesus, Duster, Sangre Nueva, Dialect, The Bug, Cleared, Mount Eerie, Mulatu Astatke & Hoodna Orchestra, Hayden Pedigo, Bistro Boy, and Ibukun Sunday.
Episode 712 has tunes by Mazza Vision, Waveskania, Black Pus, Sam Gendel, Benny Bock, and Hans Kjorstad, Katharina Grosse, Carina Khorkhordina, Tintin Patrone, Billy Roisz, and Stefan Schneider, His Name Is Alive, artificial memory trace, mclusky, Justin Walter, mastroKristo, Başak Günak, and William Basinski.
Episode 713 brings you sounds from Mouse On Mars, Leavs, Lawrence English, Mo Dotti, Wendy Eisenberg, Envy, Ben Lukas Boysen, Cindytalk, Mercury Rev, White Poppy, Anadol & Marie Klock, and Galaxie 500.
Skolavordustigur Street in Reykjavík photo by Jon (your Podcast DJ).
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This dubwise sideproject from the established Ninja Tunesmith seditiously defects from the singer-songwriter's last album under his primary Fink moniker. Yet unlike the icy-hot textures crafted by current kings of the sound Rod Modell and Stephen Hitchell, Fin Greenall's approach curves away from deep space revisionism while skewing more towards Rhythm & Sound's rootsy reverence.
Although his Ntone debut Fresh Produce rendered an auspicious contribution to the subgenre formerly known as trip hop, Fink's subsequent divagation into unremarkable folk-inflected indie fare largely failed to leave much of an impression on me. While the move earned him a new crop of followers, Greenall's iconoclastic desire to make dull songs for wistful boys and girls too proud to buy Dave Matthews Band albums alienated many of his initial fans. To those left behind and embittered, consider Sideshow, his subtly techy yet inherently organic contribution to the endlessly expanding co-option of Jamaican music by electronic producers, an olive branch of sorts.
Admit One is the second Sideshow full-length for Aus Music, a Simple Records imprint that Greenall co-founded with DJ/producer Will Saul. Contrasting with the bedroom studio norm that dominates in electronic music, these ten tracks result from a collaborative band effort, with bass, percussion, and string duties almost entirely farmed out to other musicians, leading to some unadulterated performances that save the album from the common pitfalls of more machine-driven recreations. "Youth Of Today" contains everything I enjoy about dub music, from its low slung bassline and snapping drum hits to the sonic pulses and echoes, generated in this instance by Greenall's hands-on use of primo effects units like the Alesis Quadraverb GT and the Boss SE50. Tech-house hybrids "Sequential Dub" and "African Cherry" provide that little something-something for the dancefloors, though their tempos will likely confine these 4/4 cuts to warm-up sets. On the vocal front, Paul St. Hilaire's perpetually honeyed tones bless the wide open spaces of lead single "If Alone", while Samar's persistent repetitious vocals on "French Model In Dub" complement Ellie Wyatt's disconsolate strings.
Only marginally more uplifting than a Tindersticks instrumental, the cinematic "Strung Outro" presents Wyatt's lush strings and Greenhall's tender plucking immersed in Tim Thornton's chiming cymbals and hats. This track exposes a curious alternate future for this group, one that bridges both of Greenall's projects without crossing any dangerous boundaries. The lone abscess on this otherwise unblemished record is, unfortunately, its opening track "Television," a fatuous specimen of insipid pop sung by Nashville's Cortney Tidwell, an otherwise reliable alt-country artist that should have known better than to record this uncharacteristically vapid driblet. Lacking any real connection with the rest of the choice material on Admit One, it gave me such a bad impression that for weeks I avoided listening to any of the other tracks. Thankfully, beyond this lies a wonderful album awaiting listeners willing to jump the minor hurdle and hit the forward button on their respective iPods.
Austin, Texas's Balmorhea have garnered a quite a bit of well-deserved praise for their earlier work (Pitchfork managed to inexplicably compare their previous album to both Keith Jarrett and Arvo Part), but that did not deter them from making some very substantial changes to their sound. All Is Wild, All Is Silent is the folky chamber music sextet's first recording with a drummer and stand-up bassist. Notably, it sounds absolutely nothing like Arvo Part. I'm afraid something has gone dreadfully wrong somewhere.
All Is Wild, All Is Silent borrows its title from William B. Dewees' Letters From An Early Settler Of Texas To A Friend and the music is certainly appropriate to that theme ("the album swells with images of an untamed land... and faith in the face of an unknown and savage Nature."). In simpler terms, this album is...ahem..."cinematic." Somewhat bombastically so, in fact. Of course, Balmorhea are often extremely good at what they do (the plucked violins, stark piano, and shimmering electric guitar in "Harm and Boon" are quite striking, for example), so I can't easily dismiss them. Of course, I cannot embrace it either, as their newfound maximalism clashes uncomfortably with their earlier minimalism. Balmorhea are at their best when they are simple, uncluttered, and languid (as on 2008's excellent Rivers Arms). This new line-up adds quite a bit of heft, but is a bit too song-y and liberal with crescendos and sweeping grandeur for my taste. The world already has one Calexico.
The opening track ("Settler") begins with a vaguely pretty and simple piano part and manages to prematurely explode into soaring epic mode when the strings come in after a mere twenty seconds or so. There is also a vexingly unsubtle chorus of sorts that makes me want to bang my head into the wall every time it crassly blunders in. This stylistic mishap is rendered still more distressing by the fact that "Settler" becomes quite beautiful after the midpoint, when a shimmering piano gives way to a stripped-down and melancholy interlude of acoustic guitar, mournful violin, and laconic wordless vocals. I even like the stomping outro, which ingeniously enhances the song's earlier, somewhat uninteresting themes with an exuberant Latin clapping rhythm.
"Coahuila" is one of the album's few unqualified successful songs. it contains all the usual elements of the new and brawnier Balmorhea (poignant violins, simple acoustic arpeggios, distant reverbed vocals, an intense crescendo, etc.), but is unique here for unfolding in a patient, unforced manner. Unearned climaxes and misplaced intensity are probably this album's biggest pitfalls. "Truth" also succeeds for the same reason and ends with some beautiful unaccompanied piano. Unfortunately, while some tracks stand out from the others, nothing particularly floored me. There are a lot of inspired moments on this album, but no songs that have sustained brilliance. It's all just merely pleasant and inoffensive.
I am hoping that this is a transitional album and that future efforts more seamlessly integrate Balmorhea's newfound muscularity. They are a fairly unusual and often excellent band and I heartily recommend checking out their earlier efforts, but this is a bit of a mis-step. Of course, in Balmorhea's defense, All Is Wild, All Is Silent would make an excellent accompanying score to a somewhat highbrow western. Notably, however, that film does not exist, and I feel puzzled and foolish listening to musical evocations of heroic cowboys and wagon trains in my apartment.
On her fourth full-length album, Marissa Nadler takes a conscious step away from the folk purity of her earlier work, filling out her sound with full band arrangements featuring drums, bass guitar, and keyboards. The gamble pays off handsomely, and the indie-folk pinup girl and mistress of the murder ballad delivers one of her finest albums yet.
Marissa Nadler's appeal is so simple that it's hard to explain. Though certainly her fingerpicking style is lovely, there are doubtless other artists who could dwarf her abilities. Her voice is evocative but often drenched in reverb, which is not at all an uncommon strategy for artists looking to add some haunt and atmosphere to their work. Her songs are often simplistic, and across her four albums there are certainly moments of déja vu for a careful listener; similar melodic progressions get trotted out repeatedly, and the lyrical imagery draws from such a recognizably discrete set of themes that, at this point, it would probably be possible to make a Marissa Nadler magnetic poetry lyric set for refrigerator doors everywhere. What makes Marissa Nadler's music irresistible is not reducible to any of its component parts. It's something else, something intangible, something approaching what Roland Barthes called "the grain of the voice," but somehow even less definable. Either you "get it" or you don't, and luckily, critics and listeners everywhere seem to be "getting" Marissa Nadler more with each successive release. Given this trajectory, Little Hells may well be Nadler's breakthrough album.
It's her breakthrough album because she sticks to what she knows; simple, melancholic fingerpicked folk ballads that take advantage of her sonorous, spine-tingling vocals, narrating tales of damsels in distress or lovers absent or dead. What has changed are the arrangements; many of these tracks feature a full band backing up the singer-songwriter, a band drawn from the ranks of groups like Blonde Redhead, Beachwood Sparks, and Vetiver. Sure, Nadler has had accompaniment in the past, notably some subtle synths here and there on her debut, and the electric third-eye soloing of Greg Weeks on her last album Songs III: Bird On the Water, but she has never tried for a traditional rock sound, which is her big gamble on Little Hells. Not that you would know it from the first track "Heartpaper Lover," which uses a limited sound palette with no rhythm section, just Marissa's multitracked vocals and guitar, with atmospheric air raid synths forming a creepy backdrop. But on the album's second track, "Rosary," everything changes. Not only does the track feature drums and bass, but also a noticeably jauntier and more confident performance from Nadler herself.
The changes get even more intense with tracks like "Mary Comes Alive," which add synths to the already maximalist arrangement, and ends up sounding like a lost Mazzy Star B-side. This is not to say that Marissa has abandoned her folk origins, and many tracks here retain a sense of that witchy Brit-folk vibe that made an album like The Saga of Mayflower May so appealing. More notable than the continuities are the disruptions, however, a track such as "Mistress," which incredibly, is nothing less than full-bore countrified rock, Nadler singing from the point of view of a joyful adulteress: "Goodbye misery/linens on the line...Come in now, you know I won't desert you/It's been four years waiting for the day/That would you would leave your girl and take me/Somewhere away." The production on Marissa's voice is top-notch throughout the album, transforming the sometimes miasmic muddle of past albums into vocals that are at once nebulous and piercing, like a whisp of smoke that spontaneously forms into distinct but ephemeral shapes before melting back into undifferentiated haze.
Little Hells is a fantastic album that completely transcends any tenuous association that Marissa Nadler might once have had with the annoying, and now dead, indie "freak-folk" scene. There are no willful eccentricities on display here; just a great singer-songwriter with incredible poise, seemingly in full control of her aesthetic, spinning ten haunting narratives in musical miniature.
The long awaited Venture Brothers soundtrack album, by JG Thirlwell, will be released by Williams Street Records on March 24 2009. It will be available on CD, vinyl and download. Pre-order is up now; the album ships on March 24.
The CD will only be available from the Williams Street online shop.
The vinyl, however, will be available in retail!
The Venture Brothers is a hit cartoon series aired on Adult Swim / Cartoon Network. The pieces on the album are reworked and drawn from the first three seasons of the show. This album is blistering. If you dig Steroid Maximus and Foetus, you are probably going to love this album!
The vinyl omits four tracks to provide great sound fidelity; however it should come with a coupon giving the purchaser access to a free download of the album.
While most of the recent releases from Tietchens have been Die Stadt’s archival releases and a few collaborations, this is his first full vinyl album in quite some time. As expected, it is a carefully nuanced series of pieces that fully reflects his clinical, yet inviting and engaging, take on abstract composition and sound art.
The first track of this is the side-long "Teilmenge 20," which begins as a set of indecipherable static electricity clicks that are quite warm and engaging, which quickly builds to a rhythmic cycle, continuing to mutate and diverge throughout the entire track. Most interestingly, as the rhythm sets in it truly begins to resemble a traditional 4/4 techno beat. The tempo and percussive elements are there, but the sounds in no way resemble the stale drum machines and overwrought synths.
As the piece progresses through its 21 minute duration, this influence becomes even more notable, with abstract crunches, sustained tones and raw noise stabs that aren’t far removed from the sort of elements a long form minimal techno track would include, but rather than obvious beats and keyboards, it is instead a palette of dissonant sounds and glitch textures that comprise the mix. This would be great to hear the inevitable vinyl wear and tear set in: the basic sounds are similar enough to vinyl surface noise that once the clicks and pops set in, it will probably create what sounds like a new and unique "remix."
The flip side has a much more isolated and reserved character in contrast to the almost upbeat "Teilmenge 20." "Teilmenge 33" also shows a sense of rhythm, though it is far more subtle and simplistic, and also uncomfortable: it is extremely sparse and irregular, so the "beats" never fit in when expected. Otherwise the track is full of deep cavernous scrapes and clanks, covered in a spacious, yet dark reverb. "Ein Weiteres Leben Geht Zu Ende" continues this isolated feeling, a wide open bed of tense sound on which slow collages of scrapes and crashes are built. Its slow, minimalist quality is similar in approach to the dark ambient/isolationist works by the likes of Lull and Final in the mid to late 1990s.
The closing "Teilmenge 33A" is a drastic reworking of the other track: it retains the airy, cold wind like textures and subtle bass pulse, but adds in old sci-fi style synth noises of varying durations that are almost TOO contrasting, because they feel somewhat out of place from the other textures on this LP. As a whole though, it is another great work from Asmus Tiechens that continues his clinical dissection of sound into its basic elements, and then recompiles it into something wonderfully abstract, yet carefully nuanced and structured.
This is definitely an odd little release, because it manages to not only be heavily laced with the standard black metal clichés (beyond lo-fi production values, metronomic drum machine, and indecipherable Cookie Monster vocals), but creates something different in the sum of its parts: the parts are all there, but the sound is just somewhere out in left field, in a good way.
It is obvious one of the big differences is the presentation: rather than an indecipherable blood splattered logo there is an ethereal sky on the front of the LP and simple block lettering, and both the album and track titles lead to spiritual underpinnings, yet having two tracks named after Everquest might mean something different. It is interesting to note that the sound and production qualities are pure "kvlt" by black metal standards: the sound would be much more at home on a hand dubbed tape with the title written in Sharpie, not in a full color sleeve and pressed on virgin clear vinyl.
The sound doesn't vary across the six tracks presented here, and in my first listen, it was almost impossible to tell where one began and another ended. The formula is simple: high pitched rapid guitar noodling over extremely distorted rhythm guitar work, and a simple drum machine beat that alternates from the factory "very fast" and "very fucking fast" tempo settings, with occasional outbursts of growled vocals. Or guttural noises, it’s all pretty much the same.
The lead guitar elements, not being completely immersed in production and staying more near the mid register of the scale is what gives this EP a distinctive sound, which feels less dark and bleak than most in the genre. Buried amongst the muck are some unique moments though, the slower paced rhythm guitar on "No More Sorry" stands own on its own early on, revealing an almost shoegaze like fuzzed out quality. This record doesn’t break any new ground, but it's a unique take on a genre that can easily become stagnant and boring otherwise.
While she has already built up an impressive discography in collaborations with other artists, this is her first solo CD. This wouldn't be apparent from listening, because there is a great deal of maturity in the composition and structure of the two tracks that make up this album. Alternatingly chaotic and rhythmic, there is a lot going on in this complex disc.
The longer first track opens with rattling digital bells that shift awkwardly in volume, which eventually gives way to reverbed ambient sound and high pitched tones that could probably shatter glass if played at a high enough volume. The dynamicism of this disc becomes clear, when these pristine and pure tones are supplanted by crunchy textures and mechanical ambience of a grimy, industrial variety. The patterns and abstract rhythms continue to develop as a looped piece of warm and fuzzy static punctuates the mix.
The machinery sounds become more varied and eventually lock into a song-like rhythmic structure, propelling the piece along before the sound transitions to low frequency sine waves, clicks, and electronic burps that once again build into a rhythmic structure, augmented with odd sounds and a complex, but rhythmic mix. Eventually the machinery elements fall away, leaving just repeated tones and clicking noises, finally fading out to minimal ambient tones.
The second track opens with bassy tones and some glitch style clicks and pops, along with some pronounced ringing tones. The piece is just as complex as the prior one, but the overall mix is somewhat less dense, allowing a bit more space between the varying elements. The most conventional sounds arrive in the form of arpeggiated synth elements that dominate for awhile, and eventually pull away to allow string-like electronic tones and chiming elements to be the focus before peeling away the layers and slowly fading out.
The fact that this manages to compile the standard dissonant electronic noises—but in such a way as to use them as building blocks into complex, dynamic structures—is what sets this apart from the glut of similar projects out there. It has a compositional complexity and maturity that many artists strive for, yet Zaradny has accomplished here on her first solo outing.
While the 2009 musical landscape is teeming with C86 and new wave revivalists, none do it quite as well as The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. Although they have been compared to a staggering number of disparate hipster touchstones (I personally think they sound most like a ballsier Field Mice), their youthful exuberance and melodic sense gives them a freshness that often transcends and surpasses their influences.
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart formed in New York in 2007 and released two EPs before this album (many of the tracks from those are included here). The band's sound has remained essentially unchanged from their early work (no fumbling about or struggling to perfect their aesthetic) and there is no need for it to evolve. Despite their youth, they have nevertheless managed to combine the best elements of several different scenes and avoid their perils and self-indulgences: jangly and ringing C86 guitars, the adrenaline and hookiness of the Ramones, shoegazer fuzz and reverbed vocals (sans mopery), and the wry literacy of the better Sarah Records bands.
One unexpected facet of The Pains is the frequent raunchiness of their lyrics. Usually bands of this ilk tend to fixate on break-ups, unrequited love, being sad, etc. The soft-spoken dual vocals of Kip and Peggy (not very rock and roll names, I'm afraid) certainly sound like they would be conveying sensitive, bookish content. However, the lyric sheet is full of lines like "you don't have to dress to please, perhaps undress for me" or the far more eyebrow-raising "in a dark room we can do just what we like, you're my sister and this love is fucking right!". It is refreshing that someone has finally corrected the long-standing and frustrating dearth of overt incest references and saucy double entendres in the genre. Thanks for nothing, Close Lobsters!
Just about all of the songs on the album are bouncy and hook-filled, but two stand out as particularly infectious. "Young Adult Friction" combines a muscular drumbeat, organ, and cool male-female vocal harmonies to tell a tale of hot teen library sex. This is a particularly cunning example of how the band manages to be literary (libraries are wicked literary), yet thankfully avoids being fey, overly serious, or self-important. It even features some charmingly groan-inducing wordplay ("I never thought I would come of age, let alone on a moldy page"). Meow.
"A Teenager In Love" is an absolutely perfect pop song that kicks off with a punky drumbeat, frantically strummed acoustic guitar, and a bitchin' keyboard hook. Then everything drops out for the verses, leaving only the wistful vocals and the relentlessly buoyant rhythm section. It is dynamically effective, catchy as hell, and adds weight to the chorus (when everything returns). There are also some nice Marr-esque ringing arpeggios near the end. While not as lyrically libinal as some other tracks on the album, there is still some bite ("you don't need a friend when you're a teenager in love with Christ and heroin"). I will be very surprised if I hear a better indie pop song this year.
Another thing that The Pains have borrowed from the Ramones is brevity. The ten songs on this album barely exceed half an hour—all thriller, no filler. This is an excellent album.
Industrial-damaged dirge-metalers Gnaw promise to be "as ugly as sound can get" and they inarguably deliver on that. This Face is a visceral, bilious, crawling, throat-shredding mangled nightmare of an album. Their singular devotion to being unpleasant deserves respect and admiration.
While This Face is Gnaw's debut, they already have an impressive doom-metal lineage: the group features former Khanate vocalist Alan Dubin and Burning Witch drummer Jamie Sykes. However, it is the lesser-known members of the group that give Gnaw such a distinctive sound.
The band's "music" is provided by multi-instrumentalist Carter Thornton, who largely and conspicuously eschews conventional doom-metal riffing and adds unique touches using an array of homemade instrumentation. However, what defines Gnaw is the fact that the group contains two established film/television sound designers (one of whom is an Emmy winner). Jun Mizomachi and Brian Beatrice take the band's source material and forge it into something much more crushing and complex by adding layers of field recordings, electronics, and bizarre sound-manipulations. Also, the resultant production clarity and density yields an awesome heaviness and immediacy that far exceeds that of most of Gnaw's peers.
The album's opener ("Haven Vault") is a riffless, beatless tsunami of distortion, screaming, and electronic noise. It is not boring by any means, as Dubin's vocals are quite cathartic, and the roar is augmented by drum fills and plinking eerie piano, but I found myself desperately hoping that the whole album would not be in this vein. Nine songs of formless, agonized sociopathic sludge vomit would be too much for me. I suspect Dubin spit up blood for several days after delivering this vocal performance.
Thankfully, the album changes gears immediately with the second song ("Vacant"). Dubin delivers an uncharacteristically melodic vocal performance (he sort of sounds like Edward Ka-Spel after a lifetime of chain-smoking and whiskey-drinking) and the band locks into a rare groove. One of the many traits that make Gnaw so perversely delightful is that even though this song has an actual guitar riff, it is buried fairly low in the mix and rumbling noise and feedback are given center stage. It is endearingly contrarian to give listeners something to latch onto, then subvert that by burying it with an avalanche of electronic chaos. Also, "Vacant" features some of Dubin's most amusing lyricisms ("you can hear them laughing, everybody's fucking but you.").
The rest of the album, for the most part, continues the theme of being somewhat song-like and even maintains a surprisingly propulsive pseudo-tribal industrial groove for couple of songs ("Talking Mirrors" and "Backyard Frontier"). While all of the tracks sound quite similar (although the degree of dirge-iness varies a bit), they are often distinguished by interludes of stylistic departure that delve into power electronics or tribal ambiance.
Obviously, this much hate and dissonance is difficult to listen to in an album-sized dose, but that only indicates how impressively Gnaw have succeeded. I cannot begin to imagine where the band will go for their second album—it seems like they've pretty much said it all here. This Face is an overwhelming monolith of uncompromising and malevolent nastiness.
If I didn't know better, I would swear that Mono hail from Viking territory. Their latest full length conjures up scenes of great Norse ships sailing through the fog past coastal villages that have been set ablaze.
As the opening track "Ashes in the Snow" creeps up to a roar, I can picture the aftermath of a great, bloody battle between frost giants and viking hordes spilled out across whitecapped mountains. Mono provide the perfect soundtrack for trudging through the battlefield to reclaim the bodies of the fallen. "Burial at Sea" laments the loss of a hardened old leader as his funeral pyre drifts out into the icy North Sea. As an orchestra accompanies Mono's swelling, grinding guitars, I can map out all of the scenes in an epic viking film, replete with slow motion crane shots of blacksmiths forging swords and women seeing their men off to battle.
"Pure as Snow (Trails of the Winter Storm)" starts off slowly and quietly like so many Mono songs do, but it eventually betrays its title by venturing into near psychadelic screeching and roaring noise that suggests a storm that is anything but pure. Mono put their orchestral accompaniment to great use on songs like "Everlasting Light," which closes the album out with a grand and triumphant noise. The record has an arc that begins with loss and turmoil and ends with cathartic renewal.
It's too easy to fall into the trap of simply calling Mono's music "cinematic," so while enjoying it on repeated listens, I decided to figure out exactly which movie it is that their music evokes. Though it may give away my own cultural bias, I couldn't get the idea of viking kings and wintery beasts out of my head. So with those visions, I played the record over and found that it remarkably took on a distinct life in Mono's repertoire. It's easy also to listen to any Mono record casually and to enjoy it even, without necessarily placing it. The band has been mining the same basic formula and the same set of song dynamics for years, and a quick skim through Hymn to the Immportal Wind doesn't reveal anything that particularly strays from that. Most of the songs build from quiet to loud to louder to LOUDER still, and I find that comforting—Mono with an 808 drum machine or jazzy backbeat wouldn't be as riveting. However, Hymn to the Immortal Wind may be Mono's most singluarly narrative album.
I think it's hard for people who don't follow music like this with some devotion to tell the difference from one album to the next, or in some cases, from one band to the next. With that in mind, think of this one as "The Viking Album." May it inspire someone to direct an epic film worthy of this record as its soundtrack.
Few sounds are as exhausting and as exhilarating as the voice of Carey Mercer. Whether with Frog Eyes, with myriad other projects, or solo, he conveys joy and bitterness, anger and bliss, with an allure and conviction few can equal.
Skin of Evil is Mercer's second full length release as Blackout Beach (his solo name). In ten songs over 30 minutes, he offers different perceptions about and around the figure and persona of "Donna." Her lovers relate their sparkling, fractured, obstuse tales, laden with bile and self-loathing, and the picture emerges of Donna as a siren-like destroyer of hearts and minds. If this seems a recipe for an unpleasant wallow in self-absorbed pity, the result sounds quite the opposite. The record is partly about obsession and, fittingly, Mercer knows how to gradually build a weird—almost sexual—tension and release it without deflating the entire atmosphere. The songs crackle with violent delirium; with longing, lust, and regret.
It's not an easy listen but there are sections of undoubted prettiness. Opener "Cloud of Evil" has lovely pulsing dubbish undertones and a stuttering vocal rhythm to match. "Nineteen, One God, One Dull Star" is infused with a hazy, swaying version of the kind of languid glamor managed a long time ago by Bowie on his live version of "Sweet Thing." Eventually, wider themes emerge than the Donna syndrome and it becomes clear that, as with most intimate human events, sole blame can't be heaped upon anyone: it takes (at least) two to tango. Amidst these complex crooned rants we also hear Donna's brief right-of-reply, the layered ecstatic chant that is "Woe To The Minds Of Soft Men."
One of my gripes with so much singing done by independent rock musicians is what I call the glorification of the mumble. This is often either an unsuccessful attempt to disguise the absence of feeling and meaning by hinting at incoherence or to obscure a thin and narrow range by distractions such as muddy production. This can even be presented as a virtue wherein "the voice democratically shares the mix with other instruments" or some such guff. By contrast, Mercer's cathartic singing hides behind nothing. Idiosyncratic it may be, but at least it is gloriously over the top. His claustraphobic, theatrical utterances (and the terrific accompanyments of Carolyn Mark, Megan Boddy, and Melanie Campbell) make the naturalistic versions of sincerity from the mouths of the grey legions of indieland seem like flaccid, pale, apologies.
This may be Mercer's most uncluttered recording, but it doesn't lack any intensity. The wider themes on Skin of Evil seem to go in and out of focus: self-reliance, failure, politics, salvation: and the lack of all of these. And from within the chiming guitar, thudding percussion, and layers of feverish, howling and cooing, some classic lines float by: "she burned the orphanage but saved the payroll", "we break our paddles in woe". At one point Carey Mercer sings "The automatic and justified response to a cruel and graceless age is to run away". But it doesn't sound like he's retreating from concocting the audio equivalent of molten lava any time soon.