Five years is a long time in the music industry. In fact, five years is a long time in life given the pace at which the world moves these days. This isn’t some pinning nostalgia on my part, so much as a broad observation that requires little qualification.
Back in the spring of 2010, Quills unveiled a gorgeously understated EP entitled ‘The Spirit Level’. I raved about the hauntingly evocative songs it contained on this very website. Even at the time, it was apparent Chris Young, the man behind Quills, was something of a perfectionist, swiftly redacting two of the seven tracks from the release.
It’s now February 2015 and ‘The Spirit Level’ is now finally complete, and re-emerges as a full-length album. The final track on the album, the sad, introspective ‘I’m No Good For My Health’ could well be Young’s theme tune: after all, to devote so much time to tweaking a single set of songs can’t be an uplifting experience.
But patience is indeed a virtue, and even if you haven’t heard the songs before, one listen will be enough to appreciate Young’s painstakingly meticulous approach to his work. The compositions are simple, at least superficially: the arrangements sparse, and exercising such restraint makes for an album that’s admirable in its resistance to filling the world with yet more extraneous noise. Moreover, in maintaining a mood of quiet contemplation, ‘The Spirit Level’ demands the listener invest some time and effort in order to fully appreciate its subtle depths.
‘Feathers & Tar’, one of the album’s more uptempo tracks is built on washes of distant guitar that linger and hang, unresolved, and ‘Let’s Start a War’ is bold in its starkness. Although there’s no overt correspondence, the production is simultaneously claustrophobic and distant in the way that The Cure’s ‘17 Seconds’ is. The fact that ‘The Spirit Level’ is so different, sonically, from more or less everything else you’re likely to hear, serves to render it all the more striking.
|
‘Cocaine Nights’ is presumably a reference to the JG Ballard novel of the same title, and Quills balance the sociopathic detachment of Ballards’ later narratives with a deep-seated pang of humanity that’s hard to deny.
‘Statues’ is a personal favourite: the scenario is only sketched, leaving the listener to build around the skeletal frame of its lyrics. It’s all in the delivery: ‘meet me by the statue in town,’ he beseeches the lost and troubled soul he’s inviting to liaise with. ‘It as 1989 when you first lost your mind...’ he reflects, and it’s uncertain if they’ll show, or if indeed hold it together.
Quills create vignettes which are often painful and achingly poignant: ‘Born on the back seat of a car... you never stood a chance....’ Young sings in a soft, almost quavering tone on ‘The Industry Standard’. ‘How did you manage to slip through the hands of the midwife?’ he asks, pitying and curious. There’s a stark brutality to these observations, and titles like ‘Knives’ and ‘A Surgeon’s View’, coupled with the new artwork, only serve to accentuate the fact. Yet at the same time, there’s a nagging ambiguity about Young’s narratives, an absence of resolution, that renders the songs all the more potent.
Then expansion of the release certainly doesn’t diminish or dilute its strength, and the end result as close as it’s possible to get to absolute perfection.
Quills Online
|
