Yet another Queens of the Stone Age-related release and, appearing almost simultaneously with the Mini Mansions album, we get Alain Johannes' debut long-player, 'Spark', released on Josh Homme's Rekords Rekords label. An acoustic-based collection of songs, Johannes has clearly spent a long time listening to Led Zeppelin and Robert Plant's later solo work. There's also a hint of QOTSA to be sniffed out. It may be subtle, but it's unquestionably there in the delivery and the composition: hardly surprising given his work with the band, both as a touring member and as a contributor to their 'Songs for the Deaf' album – and not to mention his work with Them Crooked Vultures and Mark Lanegan. There's a definite, albeit less than overt, sense of something simmering just beneath the surface.
Perhaps it's this undercurrent that imbues the songs on 'Spark' with an air of restraint - not to be confused with a subdued atmosphere. This in itself is an accomplishment: written to commemorate his late wife and creative partner Natasha Shneider, with whom he formed the band Eleven and who was also a one-time member of QOTSA's touring lineup, 'Spark' could have been a very bleak album. In the event it's really only the last track, 'Unfinished Plan' that's particularly desperate and dirge-like.
That isn't to say that 'Spark' has what you could call a party vibe. 'It's killing me that I must go on living,' he sings on 'Endless Eyes'. It's impassioned and anguished and raw yet at the same time strangely uplifting in the way that only such catharsis and absolute openness can be. At times, as on 'Return to You', there's a jauntiness that seems at odds with the sentiment, while 'Spider is vaguely trippy, and 'Gentle Ghosts' has almost a jig / morris dance vibe about it. But for all that, it works remarkably well, and provides a contrast to the range of emotions Alain wrestles his way through during the course of the album without falling to melancholia.
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'The Bleeding Whole' and the super-stripped back title track are delivered with a touching delicacy that's moving, and the overall sense is of an affecting album laced with a bittersweetness that's entirely fitting to the circumstances of its recording. The listener is left with a sense of having been a party to the artist’s grieving process, while at the same time entertained by some extremely listenable songs of considerable calibre.
Alain Johannes Online
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