Well, I’m maybe more than a bit wrecked myself right now but this is how the Savaging Spires album sounds. I’m aware that the above scenario is unlikely, but I’m not ruling it out just yet. The press for these guys and girls wants us to hear unfolding Espers-like folk (and maybe one track sounds a little Wicker Man) and it’s clear that this will be positioned by Critical Heights alongside the forlorn psych genius of Wooden Wand but I’m hearing more of the Finnish psychfolk scene than anything New or Weird (actually, that’s a lie) or American. I can hear a less dense Kemialliset Ystävät, a less feline Islaja, a less propulsive Avarus.
But mostly I hear Animal Collective as they might have been. On some songs (not all of these songs are songs) they take the forking path that meant Panda Bear leapt right over the Beach Boys and headed straight for Dennis Wilson instead. There’s a roughness and a fragility about some of these vocals, especially the male ones and the female voice(s) sometimes seem like they’re having to tiptoe around, so as not to send the male into shivering despair. If this seems a bit heavy then it’s not at all; it’s actually light as hell, with maybe a slight touch of whimsy, a slight shading of twee (the kind of twee that I’ve always associated with places like Winchester, which appears on the CD inner sleeve as if it’s a psychogeographical map reference). I’ve played this only once so far, it only came today, but I think it’s going to get played a lot. It might even get annoying eventually, maybe unbearable, maybe it’ll eventually seem just too fractured and whimsical ( am I saying too English? Perhaps, though I’m not sure it’s literally English; I don’t care either). It might be one of those albums that eventually does yer head in, even if you loved it once but it has a real will, like a leper hopping alongside with a bowl. It wants love and it’ll get some.-Loki-
Savaging Spires – When The Devil Says He’s Dead from Critical Heights on Vimeo.
