Sleep Decade – Collapse

While I can identify plenty of beloved precedents for Sleep Decade’s new album Collapse – Bark Psychosis, Low and Slint come to mind – there’s a dark magic at work here that makes it unique, rather than a studied retread of atmospheric guitar music of years gone by. Everything about Collapse feels carefully considered to extract maximum resonance from minimum instrumental ingredients – and the effects are devastating.

Upon first listen there’s an immediate sense of weight to the sound, thanks to meticulous production work from Casey Hartnett, Nick Huggins and Lawrence Greenwood, and mastering by the legendary Rashad Becker. However, Collapse is no one-dimensional doom-fest. The poised performances and enveloping low end are counterbalanced beautifully by the vulnerability of Hartnett’s vocals, especially when he is joined by Laura Baxter on ‘Bind Particles’ and ‘Hologram’ to trace out the lyrics’ faintly hopeful refrains. Quicksilver bursts of brass, woodwinds and synthesizer shine aching light on these emotive soundscapes.

Bookended by instrumentals, the songwriting on Collapse constantly feels threatened by entropy, with both ‘Transparent’ and ‘Bind Particles’ bleeding out in gaseous swells of tone. On the climactic ‘Exploding Suns’, a more destructive force leans in to clear a path, but rather than erupt into a cathartic storm of fuzz and noise, the restraint is unbelievable, reminiscent of how Earth sustain such churningly slow, gouging tempos. On the concluding title track, there’s no sense of resolution, just dissolution as billowing clouds of synth and brass lay waste to the sonic field.

A deeply immersive listen, and occasionally overwhelming, Collapse is definitely worth investing time in. It’s far from a summery experience, but as the Australian autumn approaches, I foresee spending plenty of fruitful headphone hours exploring its shadowy depths.

[Collapse is available in digital and vinyl formats from Sleep Decade’s Bandcamp page.]

Richard Dawson – Peasant

I don't know where we're going. What does our future hold? I worry about the world my daughter will inherit in the coming decades. During my journey to and from work, I observe my fellow commuters and feel alternately repulsed by them and deeply affectionate towards them. At our core we're all the same, and wherever we're going, we're going together – but our experience of that future will diverge wildly depending on where in society we find ourselves.

These divergent experiences are explored in vivid and moving detail on Richard Dawson's new album, Peasant. Individual tracks tell the story of different characters: 'Soldier', 'Weaver', 'Prostitute', 'Scientist', etc. However, no matter where in society these roles are played out, Dawson gives equal weight to their trials and tribulations. Everyone suffers. Everyone struggles. Everyone has their own cross to bear.

Dawson's wildly expressive voice and guitar playing have been a constant throughout his discography, but on Peasant we also find a massed choir of voices and strings, foot stomping and clapping, a herald of brass dissolving into tragi-comic parps. It's long, it's dark and dirty, and it's the most moving album I've heard in a fair while. 

For such a harrowing journey, Dawson has wisely front-loaded the album with the more accessible songs: the rousing 'Ogre', the sweetly sad 'Soldier', the hurtling 'Weaver'. From then on, although things become more knotty and bleak – especially during the nightmarish 'Scientist' and the climax of finale 'Masseuse' – individual songs have plenty of light and shade, whether it's Dawson's voice reaching delicately into the higher registers, meandering passages of slack-tuned guitar, or thunderous riffing that has more in common with metal than folk. It's a deeply disorientating and immersive journey.

While Peasant depicts plenty of suffering, the overall tone is one of hope and deep empathy. Ultimately, I'm reminded of a line from W.H. Auden's poem 'September 1, 1939': "We must love one another or die." Thank you, Richard, for creating such a raw, evocative and poetic album. Whether it will help us as we cascade towards oblivion is another matter... 

Gersey – What You Kill

For about a year, before Gersey vocalist/bassist Craig Jackson and his wife Camilla left Melbourne for L.A., I was lucky enough to play guitar in their band, The Sirens of Venice. Craig and Milli started writing songs together after Gersey guitarist Matt Davis moved to Paris, where he formed the instrumental band Bombazine Black, and things wound down for Gersey. Or so it seemed. Despite the friction of distance, the band reconvened for What You Kill, their fourth album since forming all the way back in 1997.

Before Craig left for L.A., Gersey (minus Matt) recorded 14 songs in Melbourne over the course of two weeks, with 12 making the final cut. The fact that the bulk of the album was completed quite quickly comes across in the easy, flowing nature of the performances, no doubt a product of the long-standing chemistry within the band. In Gersey’s soundworld, simplicity is a virtue, with chord changes and melodies unfolding naturally, unhurried. There's a sense of melancholic drift tempered by resilience, Craig's lyrics and vocal performances keeping things ambiguous, coloured equally with sadness and happiness. When they hit their straps, they're like the best bits of mid-tempo Mogwai with vocals – which is a very good thing.

  
For me, the highpoints of the album come when the band stretch out across six or seven minutes, such as on 'When You Hollow Out', 'Endlessness', and ‘She Knows’, a swooningly gorgeous waltz. On the more concise end of the songwriting spectrum are 'See Lucienne', and ‘Summer Days’, which evokes that mid-afternoon music festival grogginess, where you realise you’re happy and drunk, but dead on your feet with hours of bands left to watch – you can practically see the sun glinting off Jackson’s sunglasses.

The countless hours spent in rehearsal rooms and on stages across Australia, plus the new-found distance between members, could have resulted in an album that sounds tired and needless. Though the album stretches out across nearly an hour – so perhaps losing a couple of the less engaging cuts may have enlivened the whole – there's little here that doesn't sound vital and woozily ethereal. Like the gruesome monster on the cover, about to sink its teeth into a severed arm, Gersey still sound hungry.

Shearwater – Jet Plane and Oxbow

When I first moved to Melbourne and joined a band, I received some advice I shouldn't have heeded. After our first gig, a friend's wife recommended that I face the crowd more and perform in a way that acknowledged someone was watching. (Admittedly, I was playing in an instrumental band, which can be notoriously boring to watch unless there are visuals.) I tried being more animated for a couple of the gigs that came after, but it felt weird and unnatural, so I gave up and concentrated on playing the music well, hoping this would be enough for anyone watching.

What's this got to do with Shearwater? Well, this new album sounds like Jonathan Meiburg is self-conscious that more people than ever will be listening to his music, all of whom want to be impressed – and few of them will be paying for the privilege. Like its superb predecessor Animal Joy (2012), and the disposable covers album Fellow Travelers (2013) that followed, Jet Plane and Oxbow is released on Sub Pop. The stakes are high. It sounds like Meiburg may have considered that he needs to go big or go home. (He does have a parallel career as an ornithologist, so if Shearwater tanks, he could do that instead?) The promotional emails touting this release implored Shearwater fans to preorder, especially if they want the band to tour Australia. (I live in Australia, I'd love to see the band live, so my preorder dollars were immediately thrown their way.)

As much as I applaud the band's perspicacity, something feels awry. Let's suppose, for a moment, that it's possible to create a mid-tier indie-rock album in the 21st century without paying any attention to what's going on in the music industry, or of hoping to recoup the hours and dollars invested. Let's suppose that this music was created because its creators had a burning desire to do so – that this music needed to be made. Then, let's listen to Jet Plane and Oxbow and wonder how Shearwater got here, to these particular eleven songs. Much like Wild Beasts and Lower Dens – two bands whose recent albums (Present Tense and Escape From Evil, respectively) I also eagerly anticipated – there have been pre-release murmurings of a more '80s-sounding direction for Shearwater. First single 'Quiet Americans' seemed to suggest as much, with its prominent synth lines, strident drum sounds and in-your-face production.

Indeed, in an interview with Michael Azerrad on the Sub Pop website, Jonathan Meiburg makes reference to Bowie's Scary Monsters, Eno and Byrne's My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, and Talking Heads' Remain In Light as influences. Great albums all, but their relationship with Jet Plane feels tangential at best. Those albums may have inspired Meiburg to employ synths, rototoms and gated snares, but these instrumental additions feel superficial.

What seems to have changed is Meiburg's confidence in occasionally reaching for a sound that could best be described as 'stadium rock'. When this confidence over-reaches, I can't help but cringe in embarrassment. 'Pale Kings' is the worst culprit, its breakneck banjos falling over themselves to keep up with the fist-pumping pace, the songwriting falling short of Meiburg's ambition. As far as I'm concerned, the song should never have made the final cut, which is especially perplexing when more worthy songs, such as 'Evidence' (the demo of which features on the Headwaters podcast), were abandoned. Later in the album, 'Wildlife in America' is a bland and uninspiring piano ballad, and 'Radio Silence' strives for a motorik momentum that soon wears out its welcome, dragging on for nearly seven minutes.

That said, when Jet Plane hits home, its power is undeniable. 'Backchannels' is stunning, with a guitar break reminiscent of Talk Talk's sublime Laughing Stock. 'Filaments' sounds like a re-work of Radiohead's 'Bangers and Mash', all bass filth and percussive clatter. New single 'Only Child' has elegance and restraint on its side, with a lovely turnaround on the bass. 'Glass Bones' is an anthemic rock song done right, its riff down and dirty enough to cut through my skepticism. And glorious closer 'Stray Light At Clouds Hill' injects some welcome space into the mix, its vocals sent boomeranging through a tape delay.

Listening to the Headwaters podcast, it sounds like Meiburg and his band developed the songs on Jet Plane through jamming. However, little on this album conveys these origins. Somewhere along the way, something has slipped off kilter, taking Shearwater in an unsatisfying direction for such a great band. With a frontman as intelligent and articulate as Jonathan Meiburg, some of the musical decisions here are frustratingly inexplicable. My expectations of this release were high, but like Spoon's latest album They Want Your Soul, what could've been a great album is simply a quite good one.

Flying Saucer Attack – Instrumentals 2015

It's hard to know what to say about this new album by Flying Saucer Attack. I first heard FSA at uni in the mid to late '90s, and they had a vague and faintly cosmic mystique unique to pre-internet bands. All you had to go on might be the album cover and a review in the NME or a mention by John Peel. Back then, FSA were a duo (David Pearce and Rachel Brook) who stirred faint beats and vocals into their mix of atmospheric languor and MBV-esque guitar-storms. Instrumentals 2015, the first FSA album in 15 years, is just Pearce, his guitar and effects.

I don't know if these pieces have been tinkered with over the years or if they were all recorded recently. The title would suggest the latter. But it doesn't really matter either way. The context is fairly meaningless. All there is is the music. And it has the same vague and faintly cosmic mystique as it had in the mid to late '90s.

There's certainly no lack of this kind of guitar-driven ambient music around. Chuck a rock and you're bound to hit someone who plays the guitar through a string of effects pedals. However, it's rare to find someone who plays the guitar in such a beguiling way. Pearce isn't reinventing the wheel, but he does create a yearning, melancholic atmosphere akin to Windy & Carl at their most minimal and forlorn.

Describing how each of these 15 pieces sound is beside the point, really; they begin and end as though they're drifting in and out of the room, making sure they colour the air without drawing too much attention to themselves. Pearce's sound is purposefully hesitant and ambiguous. Whether the individual pieces fade out after a couple of minutes or stretch on for six, seven, ten minutes, there's the sense that in leaving the music sounding unfinished, Pearce has expanded the music's horizons, leaving it open to interpretation.

Repeat listens to this album bring fresh perspectives on the music, but no definitive answers. In that regard, Instrumentals 2015 feels so open-ended that what you take away from it largely depends on what you bring to it. I started with faint fond memories of their self-titled debut album. I walk away with a nagging sensation that there's something there worth unearthing, just beyond my grasp. So I keep coming back to explore.        

Hidden Shoal artist profile: Wes Willenbring

Wes Willenbring

My initial intention was to run through the Hidden Shoal catalogue alphabetically, but a new single by Wes Willenbring has just been released, so I'm jumping ahead. Wes creates the kind of immersive, atmospheric music that bleeds masterfully between moments of sweet repose and queasy melancholy. The closer attention you pay to it, the more layers of meaning it reveals. As such, I can imagine his music providing the perfect soundtrack to slow-moving, reflective visuals.

Wes’s songs revolve around the primary elements of guitar and piano, the sounds expertly disassembled, reconstructed and manipulated to create minimalist atmospheres that draw equally from the sounds and moods of Leonard Cohen, Erik Satie, Earth, Brian Eno, Coil, and others. Across three albums, his attention has shifted gradually from more focus upon piano on his debut album Somewhere Someone Else through more varied pieces on his second album Close, But Not Too Close, to longform works on his forthcoming third album Weapons Reference Manual, which features new single 'The Consequences of Reckless':



I've included 'The Burrow' from Close, But Not Too Close on my compilation of atmospheric/ambient tracks from the Hidden Shoal catalogue featured on Soundcloud:



Plus, you can follow Wes on Soundcloud to sample tracks from across his excellent discography:



If you're interested in licensing Wes Willenbring's music for your creative project, please contact tim@dots-and-loops.com