Music
Blues – Things Haven’t Gone Well (Thrill Jockey)
LP/CD/DL
Out Now
The Harvey Milk bassist
releases his debut solo album.
There’s no doubt, according to
the PR info that Stephen Tanner (aka Music Blues) has had a bit of a lousy time
of things. Premature birth, depression
and the death of a close friend have all taken their toll on him and are
reflected on Things Haven’t Gone Well.
By the sound of things, they haven’t.
It’s a strange album, which is
often good but it’s hard on the ears too.
There are no hooks as such, in fact much of the time the album sounds
like a sound-check. Guitars strut single
reverberating notes against a slow occasional drum clash for what seems every
track.
Opener 91771, maybe gives a
little promise. A momentous start as
guitars rip and drums pound, the album starts with a dramatic opening, if a
little long. The same theme continues
into second track Premature Caesarean Removal Delivery and the album follows
almost the same track throughout.
There are occasional breaks,
Teach The Children is a peculiar affair with treated vocals against a backdrop
of a blues track which is almost undecipherable. It starts to become quite fascinating must as
it fades out after fifty seconds. We’re
then back to the ‘formula’ of lone guitar notes with Hopelessness And
Worthlessness. Maybe it’s a sign of my
age, but I just don’t get ‘it’.
I’m wanting to like the album,
and really trying. I can imagine it as a
backdrop to a psychological horror movie, maybe the makers of American Horror
Story should have a listen. I can imagine
dismembered bodies in a dark cellar with a masked and white-cloaked madman
soaked in blood not his own. There’s a
guitar solo on Trying And Giving Up which breaks the monotony before Great
Depression continues.
Perhaps the added complication
is that much of the album is instrumental, not necessarily a bad thing but
there needs to be more a hook in several of the tracks, and again it’s another
shorter interlude track Death March which gives light.
Tanner has to be applauded for
his decision to make this album, but it somehow doesn’t quite ‘click’.
6/10
Links
Published on Louder Than War 5/09/14 - here
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