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Once more 2007 is shaping up to bring an impressive crop debut EP’s. Already this year has delivered Virgin of the Birds stellar Mixed Choir, the re-issue of Zookeeper’s debut, and White Demin’s chaotic assault upon the scene with Let’s Talk About It, to name but a few. Add these three newcomers into the mix as well, a full spectrum of excellent first offerings with the Dark Water Hymnal and former Sound Off featured band Haunting Oboe Music’s self-titled EP’s and Built By Snow’s Noise.
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The Dark Water Hymnal – The Dark Water Hymnal (SR)
Perhaps not technically an EP, Dark Water Hymnal’s stunning debut release offers only 8 tracks but clocks over 40 minutes. The soft acoustic appeal of Jeremy Ballard’s rustic ballads wrapped in cryptic and almost biblically apocalyptic imagery will no doubt draw reasonable comparisons to Iron and Wine’s early work, but the local trio’s slow and steady build and Ballard’s even, calm delivery are more reflective of Jim White’s exceptional Drill a Hole in the Substrate and Tell Me What You See. The dire sentiments of songs like “The Executioner” (“They say there was blood all over your face, that you never really knew just what to say, they say you gave away your name, and now you’re somebody else.”) and “Black Meadows Bloom” (“No one knows where the dark water falls, no end and no beginning, she carved in her chest a rose labyrinth, and now she dreams of nothing”) evince a powerfully stark Leonard Cohen poetic, while Emily Hurt’s vocals tint Ballard’s meditative verses with softer shades. “Unending Through the Dark,” the shortest track at just over three minutes, even pops with lazy, soft acoustic bounce that feels like it could be a mellow B-side from Luna’s Bewitched. With most of the songs over 5-minutes, the continual understated, hypnotic pulse can lull and somewhat diminish their potency, but the dark beauty of songs like “The Rhododendron Ruin” and “Child’s See” is breathtaking, the latter aided by Andrea Couche’s violin. These are dark water’s indeed, but mesmerizing and enveloping.
Website:
Myspace
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Haunting Oboe Music – Haunting Oboe Music (SR)
The melodic crash and burn of Haunting Oboe Music is a full-force experience, at times intentionally unsettling behind jarring bursts of horns, guitar, and keys, as the slightly unaligned harmonies echo like lost calls from another dimension. Opener “The Killer Meets the Queen” is unruly, playing like an overture of what’s to come with sudden stops and explosions punctuating George Cain’s swaggering vocal dread. It’s intoxicating and rife with an immediate terror, from the opening synth riff that bursts into screaming guitar. The opening trifecta of tunes runs together in a combination that explores the breadth of HOM’s reach, moving from the opener to the eerily ambient piano and whispers of “Hawkins” that recall Robert Miles, and finally into the dynamic horn-braced instrumental, which features versatile uber-contributor Kullen Fuchs. “Houses,” meanwhile, dissolves into frenzies of noise as the sextet evokes a Radiohead-like contemporary techno-dystopia behind the concluding chant of “Houses are built to keep the TV’s dry.” “Of This Requiem” is the most straight-ahead rocker of the six songs, forgoing most of the experimental flourishes of the rest of the album, but closer “If You’re the Last to Die, Turn Out the Lights” is the most extremely ominous, the soft keys made even more effective by the brooding back-beat, all eventually cut by what sounds like a backward-looped scream and swooning with an ebb and flow that is the hallmark of HOM’s disquieting aesthetic. Haunting Oboe Music plays like the soundtrack to a psychologically twisted avant-garde film, exploring dark recesses perhaps best left repressed, but once unsettlingly brought forward, unavoidable to ignore.
Websites:
http://hauntingoboemusic.com
Mypsace
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Built By Snow – Noise (SR)
Given the cassette cover of Built By Snow’s debut (with the tag line “rock music for smart kids, weird kids, rocket scientists, and NASA engineers”), there’s a nerdy and playful appeal to the quintet that is telling of their sound. Noise seems to draw heavily on a particular moment in the early Nineties that gave birth to bands like Weezer, where the ubiquitous and unavoidable influence from Grunge and Emo melded with Eighties antics. The album also embraces the restlessness of an adolescent video game, Y-Generation malaise, which, along with the Devo-esque synth, plays against (and thankfully undermines) the sincere howls of lines “We are kids with no dreams, we are sleeping machines” and “Happiness kills creativity” that mark songs like “Sleeping Machines.” That earnestness of the vocals creates an ambivalence that makes it difficult to interpret just how seriously Built By Snow takes their anthemic declarations of modern anxiety like “I’ll leave it up to my radio to tell me who to be” on “Radio,” but combined with the repeated retort of “Fuck radio and rock n roll!,” the songs continually feel more playfully retro than angsty. But either way, the entire 7-song EP is catchy as hell, even if self-consciously recasting that Nineties vibe in the new millennium. The Weezer influence comes full force most in the fantastic, hand-clap-backed “Juliana,” big guitars and simple lines supported with “Oh-oh-oh’s” creating a power-pop gem. Noise is an indulgence well worth revisiting, and even after a single listen, songs like closer “Laika” will stick in your head all day.
Websites:
www.builtbysnow.com
Myspace
