Is it a Bird? (Yes, in terms of the vocals, it is!). But is it the Blues, Rock and Roll, or Country to which we are treated? The promotion team at Bella Union would have it that we may even be watching a film, such is the cinematic quality of this eponymously-titled debut long-player from HOWLING BELLS.
The tale begins along a winding corridor of minor chords sliding down the scale, and the classic carousel feel is complex and densely textured, but also moving, warm and totally human ‘The Bell Hit’ then, is a song aptly-titled. The chorus is delivered in a strange key, but the message hits right between the eyes, with evidence that you can see clearly if you open them. Cinematic? This could well be.
A musical hybrid of all three aforementioned styles (similar to the Jazz/Blues/Soul ‘thang’), this is about as central to the Venn Diagram as you can get via the mind’s eye (Those with good memories, and the mathematically minded, you know what I mean!). Dedicated to all that are left floundering in the wake of cold, hard progress, the emptiness is one hell of a ‘Bell Hit’, as we hear the echoes in far-flung, and remote rather than distant places. And echo this record does, throughout. In fact, it resonates with twanging insanity and contains songs that seem unaware of where the edge of the conscious psyche is situated. That alone has to ring true with so many of us, as clear as things may or may not seem.
The unstable mental state of ‘Low Happening’ has a simplistic and very effective dynamic. The “Low, Low Low….” vocal hook opposes the heavy-handed guitar hammer-ons working their way up rather than down the fretboard to create a marvellous tension that teeters on the brink of foaming, wild-eyed insanity, without enlightening us as to the correct ‘pigeonhole’ for this music. Very clever that. A skill – if you can pigeonhole it, chances are it’s not too fresh or stimulating (Even the downright awful refuses to go away if you cannot dismiss it in your mind).
Having said that though, this has its finest moments steeped in country. ‘Wishing Stone’ has an indie accessibility, but the power is in the mental and musical collapse, conveyed by the wild and mashed-up sonic assault tactics of Joel Stein’s scraping guitar. The emptiness however, is always there, along with the echo, no more conspicuous than in ‘Ballad For The Bleeding Hearts’, which has a coherence that flits in and out of focus.
|
The pulse winds on and on, God only knows where. ‘Setting Sun’ has an off-beat that highlights the incantations present in the vocals, which are the only apparent sign of (mental?) harmony. Musically, it’s discordant and disconcerting, though oddly conventional in places, lest we lose track of what sanity sounds like. Lyrically, it’s gorgeous, and wise.
In places, there is an almost ethereal quality about it, with Juanita Stein’s voice ringing out clear above these anthems of questionable mental health. Now I get it. Bells can howl, and do loudly and long into the remotest of places. The bassline resonates further though, I think. Both further than my eyes can see, that is for certain. This is the music of wide-open spaces, where you can be strangled by your own thoughts, lost without hope of finding a home for your feelings, and die with little chance of your corpse being found. It’s an effective pause for thought that is enlightening enough on it’s own: in the context of this music, it is all the more likely to send shivers up the spine..
Pop moments? Yes, loads of them. ‘The Night Is Young’ has a twelve bar perfection somewhere in with the cacophony that makes a grand job of revitalising a path long since trodden in by lazier, less imaginative musos from here to Timbuktu.
But ‘Howling Bells’ finishes with the haunting acoustic of ‘I’m Not Afraid’, a square-dance of ghostly proportions that reaches deeper into the past than in mind (which gets rifled through in no uncertain terms). “I’ve Been Where The Sun Don’t Shine”, sings Juanita. Indeed.
When she sings that she has no fear, we believe her.
http://www.myspace.com/howlingbells
|
