|
 Wuthering
Heights
Rapture
Songs
for the Withering (Century Media)
One
day darkness showed up at my door. . . . For some inexplicable
reason, a number of Scandinavian black-metal bands have fallen
under the spell of Emily Brontë. With their picturesquely
despairing lyrics and gloomy guitars, it’s as if these noisy
hatemongers had a change of heart and fled their respective
urban hells for some frigidly windswept heath, seeking solace
in the fog-enshrouded moonlight (and eventually finding their
way to Century Media). Solitary Emily is more than a muse—she’s
also art-director-in-spirit, judging by the flow of CD covers
made from shadowy photographs of bleak still lifes or deserted
interiors. As the title indicates, Songs for the Withering,
from Finland’s Rapture, fits solidly in this melancholy milieu,
which is slowly but surely growing stateside. Although the
band aren’t breaking any new hallowed ground, Songs
is a satisfying revel in “the hopeless wreckage of heartbreak,”
made memorable by frequent interludes of shivering grandeur.
Rapture’s well-received 2000 debut, Futile, was tagged
as a Katatonia clone, so for the follow-up, the band enlisted
singer Henry Villeberg to augment Petri Eskelinen’s deathly
growl. The contrast in styles is effective, while Villeberg’s
plaintive soloing allows Rapture to cover more emotional terrain:
“Two Dead Names,” with its harpsichordy guitar and keening
chorus, will stir even the most charred sensibility. Lyrically,
the disc alternates between Villeberg’s romantic doldrums
and Eskelinen’s doleful ruminations, yet as a whole, Songs
is unflaggingly uptempo. The surging chug of the rhythm section,
the sparing use of double bass and kick drum, and the hooky,
down-tuned melodies produce the gloomy exhilaration of a rain-lashed
twilight, although it’s the elegiacal guitars that contribute
most to the disc’s powerful atmospherics, especially on the
smoldering “Gallows.”
Trying to find a distinctive voice in a confined field has
its pitfalls, however, and the band’s growing pains are evident
on a couple of tracks that accommodate Villeberg to a fault.
“The Vast” is dismayingly accessible, even radio-friendly
(as in U.S., not Finnish radio); and on “The Great Distance”
he pushes his deep funk to the point of singing off-key and
contorting the lyrics into awkward phrasings. But as the band
acknowledge in the last lyric, “Desolation is a delicate thing,”
and they reach that dankly majestical state by the final “Farewell.”
Recited instead of sung, the song is a fitting homage to Brontë’s
mysterious nihilism, with death-knell crescendos and a dirgey
guitar lead that burns like a fever.
—Ann
Morrow
Jenny
Toomey
Tempting
(Misra)
Jenny Toomey has never shied away from bold moves. Underneath
a smooth, inviting surface, her music has always had a strong
undercurrent of personal activism. Formerly with Tsunami and
a few other bands, she’s a whirlwind of noble efforts. Toomey’s
the executive director of the Future of Music Coalition, an
organization devoted to the protection of artists’ rights.
Prior to this she founded Simple Machines, which served as
both a record label and clearinghouse of information for other
grassroots artists pursuing their own projects.
After Antidote, her 2001 double-disc solo debut of
original material, the dozen tracks on Tempting were
all written by Franklin Bruno (who, for the past decade has
led the band Nothing Painted Blue and recorded as a solo artist).
The primarily acoustic arrangements evoke the rich songcraft
of the Gershwins, Cole Porter and Noel Coward, yet the album
is free of any backward-looking nostalgia, celebrating the
traditions of cabaret and art songs and locates them all in
the present day. The songs adhere to the conventional themes
of loss, longing, and romantic expectations, albeit with a
delightful intellectual verve. Toomey has a full, confident
sound; her strengths lie in her ability to imbue this material
with casual warmth. There’s nothing flashy in her manner,
just intimacy and honesty that cut to the heart of the songs.
—David
Greenberger
 Tim
Easton
Break
Your Mother’s Heart (New West)
Tim Easton wields great songcraft and compassion in Break
Your Mother’s Heart, his third solo album. Its easy-listening,
hard-thinking music may remind you of early Eagles and Jackson
Browne (the latter’s “The Naked Ride Home” is an overlooked
gem from late 2002), but Easton has his own dark, stylish
vision. Born in Lewiston, N.Y., Easton grew up in Akron, Ohio,
and became noted for his work with the Haynes Boys before
going solo with the impressive Special 20 in 1998 and
garnering widespread acclaim for The Truth About Us,
his 2001 debut for Americana label New West. His voice is
small but expressive, his guitar playing powerful, the way
he layers a song distinctive. In tunes like “Poor, Poor LA,”
and the love songs “Hummingbird” and “Amor Azul,” Easton doesn’t
settle for the easy fix. His lyrics are complex and personal
and observant: “When the work is over/And it’s just begun/I
probably should have told you/That I wasn’t coming back for
long/I need you still/Tonight my face could tell the story
better/I never meant to leave you,” he sings in “Watching
the Lightning”—his longest, eeriest track. Backed by master
drummer Jim Keltner, Bonnie Raitt bassist Hutch Hutchinson
and Browne’s keyboardist Jai Winding, Easton turns in a remarkable
clutch of tunes. Two of the most impressive are by J.P. Olsen,
“John Gilmartin” (a dust-bowl ballad for Bush’s America) and
the rueful “True Ways.” Experience Easton for power and passion.
Track Olsen for promise.
—Carlo
Wolff
Howe
Gelb
The
Listener (Thrill Jockey)
Howe Gelb’s latest lands somewhere between his two solo albums
from 2001, the surprising piano set Lull Some Piano
and the magically powerful set of songs known as Confluence
(which came immediately after his band Giant Sand’s exceptional
Chore of Enchantment). Recorded primarily during his
recent half-year spent in Denmark, the songs were for the
most part written and built around the piano. As with artists
such as Dylan and Young, setting aside the six-string for
the keys changes the architecture, filigree and pulse of the
resulting songs, but not the inherent sensibilities at the
core. Even with his new Danish pals on hand (most immediately
noticeable in the vocals of Henriette Sennenvaldt on “Torque”),
this is a tour through the musical heart and mind of Howe
Gelb. His regular gang back in Tucson is on hand for about
a third of the album, with new Southwesterners Brett and Rennie
Sparks (aka the Handsome Family, formerly of Chicago) on hand
for “Moons of Impulse.”
The fact that these dozen songs, recorded at four different
locations on two continents, flow as one unified whole is
a testament to Gelb’s ability to bring some of the Arizona
desert to Scandinavia. A foreign calm pervades The Listener,
an album that is equal parts front-porch informal and dreamscape
surreal.
—D.G.
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