SOUNDTRACK: DO MAKE SAY THINK-& Yet & Yet [CST020] (2002).
After the previous album, keyboardist Jason McKenzie departed the band. I’m not entirely sure how this impacted the band, but this album is warmer and a little more delicate feeling. It’s also their first album that was recorded all in the same place (in band member Justin Small’s house).
The disc opens with static and effects before a jazzy drumbeat comes in. “Clasic Noodlanding” is mellow with a complex (for them) riff on the guitar and nice washes of keyboards. It is primarily atmospheric until about two minutes in when it suddenly changes with the introduction of a great bass line. And then this atmospheric song turns really catchy. The five and a half-minutes feel too short in this song.
“End of Music” opens with jazzy drums and keyboards. It’s a slow piece that stretches to nearly 7 minutes. About half way through the song, the drums come crashing in and a brighter, noisier melody takes over. This end section is really catchy with some great chords and excellent drumming.
“White Light Of” opens with a cool slow bass line and drum pattern. As the song grows in complexity I like the new bass rumble that is added and the way the guitar lines seem to intertwine. About half way through horns get added to the mix, quietly at first and then they slowly take over the song. About five minutes in the song comes to abrupt halt with some interesting echoed effects on the drums. It resumes again with a stranger version of the song—it feels unsettled and really interesting, with a nice riff interspersed with one that feels off somewhat.
“Chinatown” opens unlike any DMST song. The bass sounds electronic and skittery with some interesting keyboard sounds over the top (it actually sounds a bit like later period Radiohead). The song is slow and moody for all of its 5 and half minutes with keyboard washes and skittery guitars. There are quotes thrown in throughout the song but I can’t tell what they are saying. This song was features in the film Syriana.
“Reitschule” is one of two songs that are 9 minutes long. It opens with a slow meandering guitar line interspersed with another guitar playing an interesting counterpoint. A cool bassline comes in around 2:30 which takes the song in a new direction. Horns propel the song along until about 4 minutes when a jangly guitar takes over the song. It builds with some abrasive guitar chords until everything washes away except the bass. And then it rebuilds as something else. Distant horns play in the back as the guitars play overlapping lines. It’s an epic song that demonstrates how much this band can do.
“Soul and Onward” has a pretty conventional melody line. It’s warm and friendly It also features wordless vocals by Tamara Williamson. I love the little tiny guitar lick that works as a bridge between the two sections. This is my favorite song on this record.
“Anything for Now” is the other 9 minute song. It is slow and pastoral to start with a beautiful multi-guitar piece with gentle drums. At around 4:30 all the instrument vanish except for a single organ note. It plays for a bout a minute and it seems like the disc will end that way but then the chords build up again from the drone. An acoustic guitar lick begins around 7 minutes in and runs through the end of the song.
Overall this album is more mellow than their previous discs, and there are some amazingly beautiful sections of music on this album.
[READ: February 8, 2016] Above the Dreamless Dead
I’m continuing with books that I wouldn’t normally read, to celebrate First Second’s #10yearsof01 challenge and to read something out of my comfort range.
This is a collection of poetry about World War I, written before during and just after the war. Each of the poems is illustrated by a different contemporary artist.
As you can imagine, the book is pretty gloomy. But the poetry is pretty spectacular and the illustrations were really interesting. Obviously this book is not going to be a happy one. But some of the artists do add a more positive spin on the poems (while some are just brutally violent as well).
The book is broken into three parts: The Call to War, In the Trenches and The Aftermath.
The first section is obviously the least grim. And there is some comic relief strewn about with the soldiers songs. These chants are funny and are all done by Hunt Emerson who employs a kind of Mad Magazine style.
Rupert Brooke’s poem “Peace” gets a very elegant treatment from Simon Gane. I also especially liked the art (by S. Harkham) in the poem “War” by Francis Edward Ledwidge. Harkham says that the choice of making the main character a dog was unusual but felt hat it worked very well.
Luke Pearson’s clean lines also really work well with Thomas Hardy’s words (from “Channel Firing”. Evidently by this time in his life, Hardy has stopped writing novels and had moved on to poetry.
Charles Sorley’s poem “All the Hills and Vales Along” gets an interesting treatment from Kevin Huizenga, who treats the poem like song with staves of music and different characters singing.
The second section, “In the Trenches,” is obviously much darker. Editor Chris Duffy says that our images of the trenches may be exaggerated from fictionalized accounts but that yes, things were still pretty bleak.
The first piece is adapted from a novel by Patrick McGill. It’s called “The Great Push.” I didn’t really care for this one in part because it wasn’t a poem, which kinds breaks with the premise of the book, but I also didn’t really like Eddie Campbell’s artistic so much. Mostly I didn’t like the lettering.
I did like the drawing style that Peter Kuper used for Isaac Rosenberg’s “The Immortals.” The boxy style of the illustrations reminds me of punk records and really conveys the violence well.
Wilfred Owen has three poems in the book. The first “Greater Love” is illustrated in a very grotesque style by George Pratt. I actually had a hard time looking at it. Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” is also done by Pratt. He is pretty grotesque in this one too. He very effectively conveys how awful things were. He also does Owen’s “Soldiers Dream.” Pratt’s style is once again hard to look at but very effective.
Wilfred Gibson’s “The Question” actually has a soldier wondering about his cow back home. Hannah Berry decided to have him working with carrier pigeons to indicate someone working with communications who could not find out the answer he wanted. I love her artistic style.
Isabel Greenbergs’ adaptation of Osbert Sitwell’s “Therefore is the Name of it Called Babel” has a great wood carving style that really shows soldiers experiencing shell shock.
Siegfried Sassoon has several poems in a well. For “The General” Garth Ennis contributed text to it and Phil Winslade does a wonderfully realistic drawing for it. Sassoon’s second poem is called “Everyone Sang.” This one is adapted by Isabel Greenberg. Her blocky style works very well for the birds and trees that she has “flying” in this piece.
Edward Thomas’ “The Private” does a great job in just two pages (excellently drawn by Hannah Berry) of going from pub to battlefield
Stephen R. Bissette turns Rudyard Kipling’s brief poem “The Coward” into a harrowing two-page spread.
Isaac Rosenberg’s “Break of Day in the Trenches” is nicely done by Sarah Glidden as she takes a poem that focuses on rats and really shows that it is something profound.
Thomas Hardy’s “I Looked Up from My Writing” gets perhaps my favorite adaptation from Kathryn & Stuart Immonen. I love the stylized text and drawing style that starkly illustrates Hardy’s thought-provoking words.
Wilfred Wilson Gibson’s “The Dancers” gives the collection its title. Lilli Carré’s elliptical drawing style is perfect.
Dead Man’s Dump by Isaac Rosenberg has a writer (Pat Mills) in addition to an artist (David Hitchcock) and a letterer (Todd Klein). It’s a nasty comparison of the officers to the soldiers and just how different their lives were.
Part III, “Aftermath” begins with another Siegfried Sassoon poem, called “Ancient History.” Liesbeth de Stercke’s style of black images on a white backgrounds are very effective. Siegfried Sassoon’s final poem “Repression of War Experience” is wonderfully illustrated by James Lloyd’s complex but easy to read style . Lloyd’s details are also excellent and really convey going “stark staring mad because of the guns.”
Osbert Sitwell’s “The Next War” is perhaps the most moving piece in the book to me. The hopelessness of the words “and the children went” is perfectly accompanied by Simon Ganes’ detailed drawings of war monuments.
Wildred Owen’s “The End” is illustrated by Danica Novogorodoff. She uses watercolors to great effect in this simple piece.
“Two Fusiliers” is an incredibly moving piece by Robert Graves as we watch an old soldiers’ friends slowly begin to die. Carol Tyler’s simple lines, and a character inspired by her own father who was also a veteran, really bring this poem to life.
The book ends as it begin with Thomas Hardy’s “In Time ‘The Breaking of Nations.'” This time, Anders Nilsen said he read and read and re-read the poem until a new, slightly brighter meaning came to him and he changed his art from a terribly bleak page to a somewhat more hopeful one.
Between Downton Abbey and a few other things I have learned a lot more about WWI than I used to know, and this collection really helps to round out some of the horrors the soldiers experienced.
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