Playlouder - Music is the Network

This is the third release from Southampton’s Mat Sweet on Chicago’s Kranky Records and it’s one of the most dark, miserable and interesting albums I’ve heard by what is in the main part one man and his guitar for quite a long time.

Perhaps I should be more specific. (Don’t you hate those non-specific statements?) The last time I heard an album this good - (and to be specific, I now rate the two equally), which was dark, miserable and interesting, and featured what was in the main part one man and his guitar - was the album (or b-sides collection, more specifically) ‘Lucifer’ by :Of The Wand and The Moon:.

It’s a good reference point for two reasons:

Reason 1: the albums share a style – a lo-fi sounding production with hushed, sometimes whispery vocals, acoustic guitars strummed and picked, inevitably inviting the folk label but sitting awkwardly with that quite specific evocation; also, the subject matter being of a dark, introspective, perhaps even macabre nature, and expressed in an abstract poetic way.

Reason 2: you probably haven’t heard the :Of The Wand and The Moon: release, because it’s Danish and reasonably obscure, being as it is, as I mentioned, a b-sides collction.

“Ah,” you say, “reason two is actually the reason it’s a poor reference point, Jamie; by deliberately choosing a comparison with which you presume I am unfamiliar you’re merely serving to mask your own fallibility and poor journalistic skills. It would be much better to choose a more obvious reference point – you said it has acoustic guitars and a guy singing in a sort of hushed way about stuff that’s a bit dark. How about David Gray? Damien Rice? Eliot Smith?”

What? Shut up, reader. It doesn’t sound like any of those people. Except, I haven’t listened to much Eliot Smith… but… shut up, anyway! It didn’t mention Eliot Smith on the press release, just a bunch of totally obscure artists I’ve never heard of. And I couldn’t reference them because that would be irresponsible – like launching a line of shower gel without first smearing it in a pig's eyes.  

“Ah, well surely that proves that you, as the reviewer, are actually a useless middle man, profiting like so many from the inexcusable beaurocracy of the capitalist system.”

Quiet, fool, and let me educate you. Boduf Songs has been around for a bit, having released two previous albums on Kranky, which…

“Now you’re just copying from the press release!”

Look! Will you just let me finish? 

While I am often suspicious of people with acoustic guitars and four-tracks, ‘How Shadows Chase The Balance’ displays a talent with words, melody and, moreover, mood, which it would be foolish to ignore…

“You’re trying to sound quotable now, aren’t you?”

FOOLISH, I say; and while this format can have a trance-like effect on the listener, these are songs that if listened to individually, stand on their own merit.

“You always say that, that’s not even a proper sentence. Have you checked your…

‘QUIET WHEN GROUP’ is a standout (though there are a few others) and worth drawing attention to; “Why the long face?” Mat sings, rhetorically, to open the song, (and he may as well be singing to a mirror – which is how much of the album feels; be careful you don’t end up doing the same), before reaching a chorus of sorts, in which a feeling of ambivalence and confusion is expressed with the following gloriously odd and un-lyrical lines:

“There was something that I was supposed to do / I was going to say something, it’s gone / No. No, it’s gone”

The song, like many here, is allowed to wander as it wonders but unlike many, it develops an Arabstrapesque subtle machine-made beat, lending the delivery a driving sense of passion…

“Oh come on, that’s just awful…”

…culminating in the refrain of “Even when we [insert dark and/or mystical verb here], we sigh, we sigh.”

It’s frankly brilliant, and representitive of the numerous high (or, more specifically, low) points reached on this quite wonderful little album.

“Is that is? Are you done now?”

Yes.

“Bravo.”

Oh, shut up.