Gently shifting structures underpin the smouldering folk melodies that clearly define ROBERT GOMEZ's feel for the gravitational pull of a heavy heart, recast here amidst a veritable myriad of sounds.
The purposely leaden drums and a downbeat electric guitar sound are measured for depth against the intricacies of chiming percussion and a twanging dawn raid guitar sound – the brooding distortion echoing from a reverberated lead as acoustic rhythms click at the core of the collection, always there.
The levels holding it in place deep within by bridging the gap between volume and no volume - low-key AND loud, just like like the internal mechanisms of a ticking clock, or the death of the soul.
And perhaps it is time that is weighing the heaviest from the outset here, for as debuts go, this one reveals a portrait of the artist as someone more than willing to jump straight in at the deep end – the dull pulse that thickens the jam only gets more and more fragmented as the high pitched sonic shards of percussion show up bright against the darkened mindscapes.
'Brand New Towns' is a brooding and sometimes apathetic folk/country hybrid full of delicate twists and turns that mimic the sledging non-focus of a head full of anti-depressants, weighed down to the floor and then sprinkled with peripheral (and brief) moments of clarity.
'Closer Still' opened December's five track seratonin-sapping EP of the same name and significantly it also kicks off this sliding long-player with the same reminders your first glowing point of contact as the listener is reintroduced to another heady blend of shattered introspection. This kind of slow-motion chemistry slurs the senses and floods the soul throughout as the songs creak and swell with understated melancholy, but here there is a magnifying glass view of the two-person attraction as the emotions start to sweat and simmer under all the extra close scrutiny
The inward-looking calm is in fact resignation and despair enough to slow down Earth as it spins, and Gomez allows the sinking pulse to sooth his slightly distorted vocal as it meanders across the sinking sand that the huge bass sound creates together with the dark and warped tremelo-heavy guitar , or over and over again
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Half -garbled streams of consciousness leave trailers as the mind misfires like a pulse. Waves of mutilation echo half a step behind the rattling bounce of 'Into the Sky' (no, really...!), and almost fade into the hurdy-gurdy cycle of 'Perfect'
If I Could Have You Back in turn precedes the operatic burst of 'The Coming', before the acoustic click burrows further into the thought process, unravelling all that surrounds it. Strings infuse the lurching blackness with a sense of the ethereal, as the atmospheric is taken ever further into the unknown. It's an abstract description, so for a bit of clarity there were times when the record reminded me of dear old Elliott Smith
The title track comes as the finale - complete with a complimentary booming backbeat as Gomez lets his fingers squeak in time to the arpeggio, across the frets and into the wind-chiming, sonic rattle that gently loosens the tune enough for the despair to reach epic proportions. So it sounds like tooth decay, and that is somehow apt even though all of the pain here is emotional Blaring brass and a majestic string arrangement bear the clinically depressed sentiments fittingly as they dangle by a thread of falsetto somewhere above the abyss.
This blurry and brooding music cooks!
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