The Day The Angels Cried is the third album by Avant Garde dark folk duo Jozef Van Wissem & Jim Jarmusch, the latter of whom made what for both mine and my dad's money is just about the most accurate film ever made about working nights driving a cab, we recognised all the punters and drivers in Night On Earth, it totally related in strange ways to our own experiences, dad even thought a couple of stories could have been stolen from his writing in Taxi magazine, which has nothing to do with this album of course, but is certainly the sort of music I like to play to my customers when I'm at the day job.
The album opens with Concerning Celestial Hierarchy that has a 17th century ambient style, slowly evolving while you consider which angels are higher up the pecking order. Jim's Lute is plucked carefully, tonal shifts help the cogitation.
The title song The Day The Angles Cried has deep almost whispered, almost mumbled vocals, warning us to be aware of what is bringing darkness to the world, atmospherics seep through the speakers surrounded by the slow lute and guitar notes heralding deaths warning.
The First Language is often an unspoken one, this feels like the slow fraught warning music for a dark despicably weird horror film, droning sounds are almost bagpipe like, creating a deeply disturbing musical framework the guitars work around.
She Burns In Devotion, Her Virtue Sweet Like Honey sounds like it ought to be a love song, instead it is more like a Love theme, in a film set in desperate times, in a shack in the middle of nowhere in the states, the protagonists circling each other trying to figure out, if love is really on the agenda, or is it just convenience.
There Is No Answer especially if you have no idea what the question posed was, droning across the speakers imbued with querulous feelings of befuddlement that a night on earth could sound like this.
To Those Who Mourn this is encouraging you to cry and let the pain out. A final rumination of spectral visions slowly strummed like they are climbing Jacob's Ladder towards enlightenment at where the loved ones are journeying towards in the afterlife.
The album closes with Concerning The Law Of Angels a slow atmospheric setting for ruminations on your fate, how will the angels treat you, will you be condemned to the circles of hell or welcomed into heaven, ambient noise and oddly placed strumming help you reflect, on what your fate might be, consider if you have followed the law of the angels or not.
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