This Swedish duo do not afford much of an opportunity to gradually uncover
the undercurrents of
their music, for they confess them, as it were, before the album even gets
underway. At first blush,
there are the achromatic photographs that adorn the albums cover — shreds
of
ebony cloud brew
above craggy electrical transformers and power lines coated with grit and
gutter grime. Song titles such as "the leaves have left us" and "the scratches
on the window
in the doors of each
cell" reveal an affinity for sullen, desolate themes, and, upon further
inspection, the participants, who
fiddle with everything from piano to electric guitar and a barrage of field
recordings, are identified by
first name only. At this point the assumption seems safe, if not warranted:
these lads have been deeply
marked by the musings of Godspeed! You Black Emperor and the other flighty
birds perched in their
family tree.
To stop there, however, would be to do this music something of a disservice.
This album, though it
leans heavily upon minor-key harmonics, laggard tempos, and overtly woeful
releases of tension,
harbors some plaintive, stately piano melodies, and exhibits careful attention
to background details —
from the cluck and scruff of feet smacking against pavement, to the placement
of contact microphones
at different places in the room to pick up the bristling of a humidifier or
the rustling of leaves — which
create a tight, self-contained environment, thereby enveloping the listener in
their dour disposition.
There is, for instance, something palpably unstable about the slightly
out-of-tune piano lines that
drunkenly stumble through "broken piano pt. 2." When the frantic screeching
of a screwdriver begins
flitting about as though of its own accord, images of lunatic asylums or dingy
bars are conjured up with
some detail. "...in a safe place...somewhere near your heart..." opens with
someone plucking a few
notes from a piano; a guitar soaked in reverb soon begins marching in
step. The piece is somber
and lonely, so much so that one feels one's buttons being
pushed, but all this is nearly
eclipsed when a rather violent squall of feedback charges authoritatively to
the fore. The title track is also noteworthy for its patient build, as a squall
of guitar feedback
gradually overtakes a
resigned piano motif, and slowly bleeds the listener's resistance dry.
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