Not all tracks are thrilling, like the acoustic and mellowish Cocoon, but Castaways And Cutouts is a real breath of fresh air. The album is maybe lacking of deeper true folk roots to get more aknowledgment from eminent reviewers, but it is quite an enjoyable record. Recommended, and not only to prog folk enthusiasts. This band deserves much more exposure and reviews only one commented review before mine for this album. Wake up guys!
It's The Decemberists time. To be fully honest as usual , I would just say that the second part of the album, after the excellent Odalisque is shy in comparison with the superb start which is pure melody from Leslie Anne Levine to July July. Castaways And Cutouts is definetely an album that you should listen to. Due to a weaker second part even if The Legionnaire's Lament is really cool , I would rate this effort with seven out of ten. Just shy of the four stars rating.
The lyrics are sometimes weird, but in a good and humourous way. Not much though. The musicianship is excellent. The Decemberists create a warm and organic sound. A well playing band. The production is equally warm and pleasant. The organic sound and pleasant instrumentation adds to the warm atmosphere.
I could have wished for more experimental structures in the songs, but the band keeps it simple. Maybe a bit too simple and inoffensive IMO. For a first album, this is a surprisingly solid entry.
The good is that Colin can already write a catchy pop song Still, the next two songs prove that the real attraction of the band is not radio staples.
The song contains in its five minutes all the pomp and stomp of a real prog epic. Opening like a slow paced funeral march, the song quickly evolves into a organ and guitar backed foot stomper. Why oh why oh why then, Mr. The song is hilarious, and the band sounds like they want to play it as much as I want to hear it.
Still funny though; it was actually once my choice for best song on the album. Skip it. Nice finisher. So what do we have? We have a first album which finds the band not quite sure of itself, which is understandable. I could hardly blame them; first album jitters and all. From start to finish, the album presents almost a single psychological strand: this is dream folk, rather than dream pop there. I think I just invented that term; you can thank me later.
This has its good and bad sides. On the one hand, a fifty minute voyage of solid dream folk is going to take its drain on those who like a little variety in their records.
What it is not is prog rock. Not yet. The album offers upbeat pop numbers such as 'July, July! MELOY is a superb storyteller, albeit of the bleakest elements of the human psyche. His voice is fingernails on the blackboard for some, but I consider his timbre absolutely ideal for the sort of songs he writes. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than on the underrated 'Cocoon', where his voice complements a beautiful, gentle song, one of the album's highlights.
It's the band's first prog offering, and is worth listening to. Opening with a riff that could easily have found a home on Led Zeppelin III, we are led along the California coast, lazing in the sun, head fuzzy with wine, only for the pace to change as we are invited to enlist with the Youth and Beauty Brigade.
The song captures both the glory and futility of life, the castaways and cutouts of society. This album is superb. The chord progression is not typical but the melody is catchy, a combination which helps to make the song immediately memorable. The lyrics are utterly amazing in a way I can scarcely articulate. The solider, declaring his allegiance to the war, says that he would do anything to lie with his love except give up his gun. The titular second verse describes someone with no building skills who dreamt he was an architect, and though his work was unsurpassed, he could not build a banister sturdy enough to maintain his relationship with his romantic partner.
The third section describes a womanizing Spaniard who could manipulate women like puppets. But in the end, the protagonist is a man on the run with his girl, so close to death that they refrain from wearing seatbelts. The overall theme that I personally take away from this great song is that while we may imagine ourselves in wonderful and glorious circumstances, we sometimes fail to realize that what we are is much better than what we could be. Hence, it's better this way.
It's an upbeat song with a catchy chorus. The lyrics are typical of the horrible nature of human depravity that Meloy effortlessly tackles; in this case, it's about a mother who is forced by sailors to be their whore at night lest they kill her. Fortunately, their music also possesses enough unique twists to distinguish it from simple mimicry.
The most obvious is the band's often baroque instrumentation, which generally makes for more elaborate arrangements than those of their stylistic forbearer. Hammond organ and subtle theremin flesh out the mix, each adding an anachronistic spin on the otherwise quaint jangle of strings and guitars hearkening to some dusty, distant past. Melodic organ riffs, meanwhile, slightly warp the old-time illusion of the music-- the better to compliment the absurd, rag-tag world at the center of this band's dreamy fictionalizations.
The Decemberists' is a land of ghosts and petticoats, "crooked French-Canadians" gut-shot while running gin, bedwetters and gentlemen suitors, abandoned wastrels and pickpockets. Time and again, these unhappy tales and fantastic allegories ring out over strangely soothing, rolling folk that seldom breaks from a dense, melancholy haze.
Only once does Castaways and Cutouts fully escape the hypnotic pull of its darkling bedtime stories; "July, July! With dirty hands and trousers torn they grapple 'til she's safe within their keeping. A gag is placed between her lips to keep her sorry tongue from any speaking or screaming. And they row her out to packets where the sailors' sorry racket calls for maidenhead and she's scarce above the gunwales when her clothes fall to a bundle and she's laid in bed on the upper deck.
And so she goes from ship to ship, her ankles clasped, her arms so rudely pinioned, 'til at last she's satisfied the lost of the marina's teeming minions in their opinion.
And they tell her not to say a thing to cousin, kindred, kith, or kin or she'll end up dead. And they throw her thirty dollars and return her to the habor where she goes to bed. And this is how you're fed. So be kind to your mother, though she may seem an awful bother and the next time she tries to feed you collard greens remember what she does when you're asleep. Odalisque They've come to find you, Odalisque, as the light dies terribly.
On a fire escape you walk, all rare and resolved to drop. And when they find you, Odalisque, they will rend you horribly stitch from stitch 'til all your linen limbs will fall.
Lazy lady had a baby girl and a sweet sound it made. Raised on pradies, peanut shells and dirt in the railroad cul-de-sac. And what do we with 10 baby shoes, a kit bag full of marbles and a broken billiard cue? What do we do? Fifteen stitches will mend those britches right and then rip them down again.
Sapling switches will rend those rags all right. What a sweet sound it makes. And what do we do with 10 dirty Jews, a thirty-ought full of rock salt and a warm afternoon? Lay your belly under mine. Naked under me. Such a filthy dimming shine, the way you kick and scream. And what do we do with ten baby shoes, a kit bag full of marbles, and a broken billiard cue? Cocoon This cocoon, caught in Vesuvius' shadow. Only the ashes remain.
And I waited there for you. Why couldn't you? Here we lie, waiting for something to startle, to shake us from gravity's pull. And so the sleeping hours are through. What can we do? The tainted election, the low dirty war, it happened before you came to. But this is solution, and this is amends. The joke always tends to come true.
But there on your windowsill over the unmoving platoon, written in paperback: the key to the quarterback's room under waning moon. This quiet serves only to hide you, provide you, what I knew: it'd come back to you. Take this palm, follow the lines here are written and script out the rest of your life and feel your fingers falling slack and all folding back.
The sorry conclusion, the hole in the sky, command what is tried, what is true. But without solution, with feet on the ground, it won't make a sound 'til you're through. So loosen your shoulder blades. This is your hour to make do. Because there on the timberline deep cold November shines through, soft and absolute. Grace Cathedral Hill Grace cathedral hill, all wrapped in bones of setting sun, all dust and stone and moribund.
I paid twenty-five cents to light a little white candle for a New Year's Day. I sat and watched it burn away then turned and weaved through slow decay. We were both a little hungry so we went to get a hot dog down the Hyde St. The light was slight and disappeared. The air, it stunk of fish and beer. We heard a superman trumpet play the National Anthem.
And the world may be long for you, but he'll never belong to you. But on a motorbike, when all the city lights blind your eyes, are you feeling better now? Some way to greet the year: your eyes all bright and brimmed with tears. The pilgrims, pills and tourists here all sing "Fifty-three bucks to buy a brand new halo.
I paid twenty-five cents to light a little white candle. The Legionnaire's Lament I'm a legionnaire, camel in disrepair, hoping for a Frigidaire to come passing by.
I am on reprieve, lacking my joie de vivre, missing my gay Paree in this desert dry. And I wrote my girl, told her I would not return, I've terribly taken a turn for the worst now, I fear. It's been a year or more since they shipped me to this foreign shore, fighting in a foreign war, so far away from my home.
If only some rain would fall on the houses and the boulevards and the sidewalk bagatelles it's like a dream. With the roar of cars and the lolling of the cafe bars and the sweetly sleeping sweeping of the Seine. Lord I don't know if I'll ever be back again. Medicating in the sun with pinch doses of laudanum, longing for the old fecundity of my homeland. Curses to this mirage!
0コメント