Nick Grey has forged a career from being unpredictable and producing albums that differ greatly from one another. In keeping with this, ‘Breaker of Ships’ couldn’t be much more different from last year’s predecessor. Whereas ‘You’re Mine Again’ was a theatrically-minded piece of grandiose romanticism, this latest offering is dark and altogether heavier.
The title track broods and bows and builds over the course of its ambitious 11-minute duration, climaxing in a soaring rock guitar solo. There’s stuttering 80s-style electro and industrial noise in the distance on ‘Of Ghosts & Women’, while Grey channels the vocal stylings of Marc Almond.
‘The Archivist’ brings sinister, string-laced chamber folk, and the arrangements on ‘Breaker of Ships’ tend toward being sparser, tender, moodier.
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Grey is a master dramatist: ‘killed off God / killed of Jesus too / killed off my demons and killed off my Momma too’ he croons theatrically at the beginning of the hauntingly lugubrious ‘Vanisher’. The strolling bass and squalling guitars of ‘Juliet of the Bones’ is worthy of early PiL, and when considered in context of the album as a whole – including the bonus track, the Scanner remix of ‘Here He Comes Now’ – the scale and ambition of ‘Breaker of Ships’ becomes truly apparent.
Nick Grey Online
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