The Rock Blogger

Crippled Black Phoenix. A Love of Shared Disasters. 2007. 3.5 stars.

A Love of Shared Disasters is an incredibly difficult album to get into. It’s not that its songs are really that obscure, unconventional or abstract, its that each one sounds completely different from the other, making it seem uneven and beguiling at times. The eclecticism in the material may come from the diverse membership of Crippled Black Phoenix, featuring a few folks from Mogwai, Electric Wizard, Portishead and others. The band touches on everything from ambient to folk to explosive post-rock all across the album’s lengthy running time.

When CBP are at the top of their game, like on the rollicking “Suppose I Told the Truth”, they sound inspired and ambitious as they blend clear alternative-rock hooks with spiraling post-rock ambiance. The effect, on that song in particular, is quite moving, sounding like a cross between the infectious melancholy of The National and the star-gazing wonder of Explosions in the Sky. Moments such as these are plentiful, albeit scattered, across this album, with each effort brimming with tension and cool, nightly atmosphere.

Its just unfortunate that these shinning moments are fitted between indulgent experiments that don’t really lead anywhere interesting. Long, barren ambient interludes, awkward spoken word samples and drawn out ’slowcore’ passages fill out the album. While these moments are certainly moody, and occasionally gripping, they drag down the record’s overall flow and detract from the genuinely epic numbers.

If the collective had decided to trim 15 minutes or so from the record, they may have had a definitive and essential post-rock record on their hands. When this band plays tightly, they are on another astral plane, drawing avant-garde and alternative rock sounds together in wildly original and beautiful compositions. So until they produce a more cohesive album (fingers crossed for a followup), you’re pretty much skipping through half of the songs here to get to the gems. Still, they are definitely worth searching for.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 9:24 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.