Retribution Gospel Choir
Retribution Gospel Choir
Caldo Verde
By Jose Fritz
Alan Sparhawk is a strangely religious man. He believes firmly in an impending apocalypse. A Mormon upbringing will do that. And in being Mormon, he believes in retribution, retribution as a retaliatory penalty, a rectification of misdeeds. The cover of the album says everything – it’s a massive field of sheep all grazing in unison stretching out vast, beyond the horizon. The image is low contrast with little detail, everything seemingly and simultaneously homogenous. Then, off to the left a single standing figure, an island, a mountain, a man, but also the herder, the father, the caretaker. It’s oozing, religious symbolism off the page. He sings in the highest pitch he can control:
“I am the destroyer / I am the angel of death
My head is filled with fire / I hear the voices of the dead”
The song is almost as slow as his iconic work in his former band Low. But there’s more sludge, more distortion, more anger. The innate darkness is deeper with a greater absence of light. What else can possibly follow those words? The sounds of slaughtering rabbits, samples of Jim Jones screaming, trees falling, crackling embers, the waves crashing up upon the mainland, hail fire mingled in miscegenation with blood.
But the album doesn’t stop there at the obvious ending. After “Destroyer,” the album takes a sharp left turn into deep catalog emo. The dissonance between the two halves makes the whole feel like 2 EPs; the first half flirts with the rumble of Queens of the Stone Age, the second half emulates Far. He sings sweetly, the darkness is lifted like an evaporating fog.
Like Stars of the Lid, Low was lethargic, bordering on dirgy. Some very stoned denizens of the Twin Cities blessed out on the slow-core sound. We, the sober few, were bored out of our fucking minds. Alan Sparhawk would strum a dissonant chord and let that puppy hum all the way out until nothing was left in the air but the pickups sucking down amp static, then he’d whimper a bit and do it again. I don’t have to like it to understand it. They redefined slow and minimalism, doing for ennui what Idaho did for depression.
It was no surprise that after Low quieted down, Alan started the Black-eyed Snakes. He was after all alive, with a beating heart and living body and imbued with the same urge to move us all. The Black-eyed Snakes hit the downbeat like Bo Diddley. It was righteous, but also a caricature of a rock band in a way. Sparhawk had always been so moody, so smooth and methodical before, but in that setting he was suddenly alive and cloaked in darkness like a Memphis preacher. This new project sits proudly astride the two.
|
