Surname-free frontman Benjamin's gravelly vocals apply a decidedly Tom Waits-esque veneer to dusky tales of lost boyfriends and rotgut-fueled benders, while daubings of trumpet, cello, and timpani illuminate the music's darkest corners. While best as a whole, "When It Rains," "Train Song," Debbey's Song," and "Snake" are some of the record's best fasting tunes.Īnother Reason To Fast, the sophmore album by Atlanta's Smoke, is positively drenched in the three d's of cabaret gloom: dissolution, dissipation, and desperation. The world is an undeniably more interesting and eerie place as visualized by this kind of exquisite storytelling, and this AtlantaĬollective's secon long-player creates a considerably rich and provocative one. Benjamin's musings are pained, sarcastic and, at times, nerve rattling, while the melodic lines created by his bandmstes' brass and strings are understated and beautifully woeful, layered among a bed of plunking banjo and feathery electric guitar work. Rather than lingering in mere histrionics or fabricated atmosphere, Smoke creates emotion through difficult, often disparate musical pathways. But idiosyncracy comes in an unlimited variety of shapes and sizes, and Smokes brand of twisted Southern dispossession enjoys a universe all its own. His backing - cornet, banjo, cello, guitar and sparse percussion - weaves a similarly moody, rag-tag tapestry of color. Like Waits, Smoke's vocalist/lyricist Benjamin weilds an immediately striking, tattered growl that is particularly fond of wandering in and around shadowy places and downtrodden characters. That Smoke's most obvoius reference point is Tom Waits is both complimentary and misleading. Their supplicants at the Point and Clermont. Their second album should not only extend the musical boundaries they've been operating in, but also bring them notoriety far beyond This all-star post-Opal aggregate enjoys a suprising amount of fame, given their interminably morbid style, but that probably says more about their audience than it does about their music, for Smoke certainly do not pander to anyone's lowest-common-denominator expectations. Rumored proclivities aside, Smoke's version of chamber country blues is still one of the most iconoclastic and enjoyable around.
0 kommentar(er)
