Review:'Andre Salvador & The Von Kings' 'Draped Apes'
- Label: 'Last Night From Glasgow/Bandcamp'
- Genre: 'Indie'
- Release Date: '25.11.22.'
Our Rating:
This is Andre Salvador & the Von Kings second album on Last Night From Glasgow records. The band relocated from Brooklyn to the meaner streets of Nashville to record their fourth album. They still don't feature anyone called Andre Salvador, this being mainly the project of Tim Cheplick and Paul Provenzano with anyone else they rope in along the way. This follows on from the bands self-titled album a couple of years ago, that they described it Craft Batch indie Rock.
This is very well crafted but also rather bland sadly.
This album opens with a long-bowed note at the start of White Noise as it builds gently caressing the listener, not featuring any White Noise at all, this is the calmest song imaginable called White Noise with whispered vocals and understated production.
Nightmares You Waste could be considered, to be about wasted opportunities, to learn from how things have gone wrong previously, the breathy vocals being surrounded by gentle guitars, with sparingly used percussion this is very restrained.
Dieu Du Ciel appears to be a song about a Belgian pub in Montreal or something along those lines, it rises, falls and feels gently intoxicating, with backing vocals that owe a debt to Chris Bell's I Am The Cosmos album.
Whose Time keeps to a similar tempo and feel. The Permanent Blues ups the pace a bit, it has more urgency to it with a slightly squelchy bassline and a bit of a guitar freakout. Lounging Around is a short piece of wallpaper background music.
So Psychic feels like you might need a Ouija board to locate the psychic soul at the songs centre, this feels so gentle as to want to send you to sleep, until the breakdown where a few odd noises come and go.
Back is almost chamber indie with sparse notes on a trumpet coming through and over the strummed acoustic guitar and enveloping whisper in your ear vocals.
Gorilla Days is about an hellscape of a journey in a stolen Yellow Cab, that might feel edgier if the music wasn't quite so held back, it needs more danger.
Sunny is fey background chamber indie that doesn't really connect to me at all, it's ends up more like backwash no matter how nice the Spanish guitar parts are.
The Undertaker is a slow careful piano led eulogy that takes an opposite approach to the Lee Scratch Perry tune of the same name. This is for wiping away a tear for all those we've lost since the bands last album came out.
None Plus None equals about what you may feel listening to this album, as unlike the self-titled album I reviewed a couple of years ago, this one seems to get blander and more nondescript as it goes on, as if they want to be purveyors of background music.
Being Yourself is introspective slow careworn evocation and encouragement for you to be yourself, at all times.
The album closes with Leaving that keeps the steady slow pace of this album, that all feel so carefully put together, yet sadly so bland as to be far too easily forgettable in the busy music world we live in.
Find out more at https://shop.lastnightfromglasgow.com/collections/andre-salvador-the-von-kings/products/copy-of-in-the-forest-these-four-walls https://www.facebook.com/asvkband
https://andresalvadorandthevonkings.bandcamp.com/album/draped-apes
