The melody is slack, played out like a loose rope across dream-like guitars
and hazy vocals, given structure by the off-kilter pulse of drums. "Song of
the Ancients," kicking off San Jose-based Helvetia's debut, is a pop song
encased in mystery, its sweetish shards of song refracted over non-standard
measures. It's hard to grasp, evoking both tense
uncertainty and dreamy respite. Like the rest of The Clever North
Wind, it is more complicated than it seems, gauzy melodic surfaces only
partially obscuring experimental time signatures and discordant
improvisation. It will remind you, a little, of Bound Stems' lithe
pop/noise excursions, though the songs are dronier and less overtly
structured than that band's output.
Helvetia is a joint project of Jason Albertini and Canaan Dove Amber, who
also worked together in Duster. As in the earlier band, with Helvetia,
they continue to explore possibilities at the intersection of drone and
more structured pop. The Clever North Wind encompasses extremes of
both, with Albertini, who was Duster's drummer, putting syncopated,
odd-time-signatured beats under liltingly pretty songs. The gentle
"Beezlebub (Leave Me Be)" is more like a pop song, its whispered lyrics
atop a regular, beat-tethered piano line, in stark contrast to the jazzy,
abstract "Gladness," which follows immediately after. Yet the best tunes
seem to fall right into the interstices, combining hypnotic tones with
recognizable melodies. "Dusty Rue," one of the album's highlights, is a
hallucinatory soundscape, all distant, echoing cries and furiously altered
guitar notes, the drumming frantic and freeform; yet there's a tranquil,
melodic center to this one, a space for serenity in a vortex of sonic
experimentation. "Viva the Decline" is also quite good; it explodes into
exuberant guitar-and-drum frenzy late in the cut, yet what you probably
remember is its keening, chanted vocals.
The latter half of
the album contains several dub-leaning tracks, the slow reverberating bass
of that style anchoring dreamy, stop-motion melodies. "Dead Hands" has the
strongest whiff of this interesting texture, though once you hear it, the
back-beat in other tracks ("Helvetia," "The Drowning End") becomes more
evident as well.
There are lots of interesting elements in the mix here — hints not just of
dub, but jazz, funk, soul and post-rock — all referenced in a low-key,
soft-focus way that never seems forced. The music is probably quite loud
live, but on disc it has a mellow, relaxed vibe, songs slipping by like
cirrus clouds against an overall backdrop of blue-sky good feeling.
|
