The Rock Blogger

Rome. Flowers From Exile . 2009. 5 stars .

Grave, resolute and romantic, the sounds of Rome travel down to the battlefields of the heart. The deep, bellowing vocals of Jerome Reuter are the centerpiece of this brooding neofolk album, as they hang over lush acoustic guitars and scattered samples of European poetry and martial speeches. The lyrics are exquisite, evoking the lonesome spirit of the soldier, or the dreaming revolutionary, longing for distant memories of love or some stern vision of the cause.

Sounding like a cross between Tom Waits and Tenhi, Rome blend a stark, war-time atmosphere with beautiful folk instrumentation. Strings, piano, choral lines and flamenco guitars weave their way across the face of this album, painting faded pictures of the Occident. “Accidents of Gesture” is slow-boiling and suspenseful, as Reuter’s baritone leads in foreboding percussion and soft drones. “Odessa” is love-lorn, centered on minimal finger-picking and elating vocal harmonies. “Secret Sons of Europe” features galloping Spanish guitar lines. “Legacy of Unrest” speaks of being torn between two sides, over subtle piano arrangements that glide across refrains of “it feels like spring again”.

Both intensely emotional and melodically stunning, Rome shines a light on the daring complexity and ambition of the neofolk genre. The songs here are much more than exercises in nostalgia; they are memorable and highly detailed pieces of art that slowly reveal themselves over time. The colors here are sepia-toned and warm, like the sands of Italy, Spain and Northern Africa, the sun-scorched burial grounds of distant conflicts. The sounds here are not isolated in history however, as Reuter’s powerful delivery recalls many doomed struggles, the faltering campaigns of the human spirit. One of the year’s best.

I thought I would provide some context for my previous post. Stan Brakhage (1933 - 2003) was a renowned experimental filmmaker whose innovations included hand-painted celluloid frames that would produce phantasmal imagery. The following are some samples of his work.

Ben Chasny’s Six Organs of Admittance is one my favorite projects at the moment. Given my hectic schedule as of late, deep, meditative music like this is vital. These videos bring out the texture in this music and have a Stan Brakhage quality to them. The newest SOA album Luminous Night marks a departure from drone/noise influenced psychedelia to more straightforward folk. I suggest you check it out.

Mount Eerie. Wind’s Poem. 2009. 5 stars.

“Show me shapes in the swirling dust…”

Singer-songwriter Phil Elverum (The Microphones) has delivered a powerful release that usurps the traditional folk/lo-fi indie sound with deep, menacing drones and dark naturalism. Elverum’s soft, intimate voice provides a stark contrast against walls of distorted guitars and drawn-out synth lines,drawing the listener down into the waters of resignation. The union between gentle folk and atmospheric “shoegazing” is inspired, presenting an intense melancholic vision that soars overhead and sinks into the ground.

Haunting lyrics call out to the wooded landscape in sadness, longing for depersonalization, turning to the wind, the river and the sky in repose. While we never know the concrete reasons why Elverum’s “heart is not at peace”, we can petition the daunting forests of the Pacific Northwest for an answer, letting nature speak our disquiet for us. The fixed subject is torn apart, strewn across ragged cliffs, leaving mysteries concealed and vexing. Getting lost in these spaces is not a despairing journey however, but rather a cleaning of the slate, a call to cast off our vanity like stones in a stream. The emotional and aesthetic achievements of Wind’s Poem, however understated they may be, should not be overlooked. A masterpiece.

Enmerkar. Starlit Passage . 2008. 5 stars .

A simply mind-bending EP from this little known black metal/dark ambient band. A swirling celestial atmosphere hangs over these 5 songs, sending the listener through a cosmic rush against the void. Enmerkar builds an impenetrable wall of sound from waves of distorted tremolo guitars, melancholic drones and distant, rumbling percussion.

Eerie arpeggios drift in and out of the darkness, similar to the lonely dynamics of Paysage d’Hiver and Drudkh. Raspy whispers echo throughout, giving the black sea a solitary, searching voice. While the layers of instrumentation make this a heavy release, there is still rousing lightness to the climatic wails of guitar, like satellites pushing against the burning atmosphere.

Despite it’s brevity, Starlit Passage is just as deep and compelling as any full-length metal album to come out this year. Enmerkar pushes into the domains of post-rock and shoegaze far more organically than others and remains focused on it’s interstellar mission without being too self-conscious about it. A mesmerizing work that discloses the shamanistic verve of it’s aesthetics.

Photos by Sorina Dragusanu

Despite suffocating in clouds of tobacco and pot smoke, the Tool concert last evening was a hypnotic experience. Amid the throngs of white-trash and spotty teenagers, I could still revel in the cosmic death-dance that was Tool’s set list, which primarily focused on songs from 10,000 Days and Lateralus.

Maynard and his band were in top form as they hammered through densely textured performances, extending their already lengthy songs with spiraling solos and haunting drones. Revisions of “Stinkfist” and “Lateralus” in particular were stunning, as unexpected twists and turns in songwriting gave the night an almost tribal sense of spontaneity.

It was also strange and fascinating to watch thousands of lighters creep above the crowd as the high pitched guitar drone of “Lost Keys” split over the Molson Amphitheater like a haze of incense, showcasing Tool’s otherworldly mystique. As the intro led into the colossal “Rosetta Stoned”, a song about receiving messianic truth from aliens (only to forget it), I had to admire the band’s ability to weave dark humor with insatiable spiritual longing.

The ying/yang of destruction and creation was revealed with greater clarity with “AEnima” and “Lateralus”. The former, an apocalyptic diatribe against vapid excess (owing much to Bill Hick’s “L.A. Falls” on Arizona Bay), showed Tool at their most caustic, as screaming guitars echoed Maynard’s calls to “wash it all away”. The latter song took up the cause of rebirth and resurrection, as the slow-burning climax called for wholeness, catharsis and the opening of new possibilities. It is refreshing to see a metal band engage with both ends of an antagonistic spectrum, sending out deconstructive energies in the most creative and explosive light.

The most striking appeal of this show, and for Tool’s music in general, is the tension between harrowing despair and purifying release, a movement that can help characterize the band’s artistic development from the subterranean laments of Opiate and Undertow to the expansive and searching spirit of their most recent work. It is progressive metal that is progressive in nearly every sense of the term, drawing out deep personal (and perhaps universal) forces and letting them “spiral out” above and beyond the fallen everyday.