A His Name Is Alive boxed set – Wow! — this is beyond incredible, especially so soon after the Silver Thread pre-group groundwork of Warren Defever’s formative years. Loads of unheard bonus material to salivate over too, enough to fill another three records in addition to the 4AD trio.
Livonia and Strings
Great to see Livonia’s timeless intrigue still holds true. The bleach-scarred monochrome of Beverley Carruthers‘ photography (bathed in silver nitrate for this release) seemingly shifting with the album’s sonic effects and lyrical ambiguity. Sounds that feel dream-caught, full of malleable suggestion and anxious imagery, sonics that obsessively tendril or bucolically butterfly. A slippery sense of self that’s quite haunting and emotionally porous.
The coppery curls of “If July”, its sulphurous slants of acoustic guitar glinting metallic in the murky half-light. Karin Oliver and Angie Carozzo’s warm vocals here and elsewhere pillowing its late-night periphery, lamenting love found, lost or stuck in the fragmented betweens. Betweens that “E-Nicolle” and “Fossil” python, a dark atmosphere convincingly conjured in the endlessly circling sleep-apnoea of “How Ghosts Affect Relationships”, metaphorically burying the bodies of previous lovers beneath the floorboards.For me the richness of Livonia was my introduction to the band, a starting point to a life-long love affair with the music they’ve continued to create. A magical revisiting, here topped-off by four extended string versions that, due to their ultra limited nature back in the day, I’ve never actually heard before, and it’s definitely worth purchasing this boxset just to experience them.
The layered creep of each song cleverly reconfigured and texturally divided. The inky hue of the originals parasolling a buoyant light, of which the twelve-minute retake of “Fossil” totally shines. The original words tonally smeared on its reality-removing repeats, sinew-swaying a sweet hypnotic, their delicate slumbering flavours drifting off into uncharted territory.
Home Is In Your Head and Dirt Eaters
Following the chronological flow, the next album Home Is In Your Head, refined things further. Enhanced by extra band members, its atmospherics dug that little bit deeper to produce a twenty-three-track collage of fleeting impression and introspective itch. Incised by a gentle acoustic and some incredible vocals, it’s brimming over with ideas, occasionally sabotaged in daggering dissidence.Strange and beautiful tales that gel well with a hot summer’s evening and a glass of absinthe. The stippled twilight of watery light on “Sitting Still Moving” dissolving into view. The unsettling corona of “Tempe” leaning into the unseen with its spell-like weave. Songs that summon in elliptical sparks of guitar, pushing out in oddly shaped parallels and killer melodics. The elusive meanings behind the narrative sometimes leaving you in the dark in the same way as the Twin Peaks-like sprouting potatoes of the inside sleeve arts. What a mysterious joy this still is. The Māori-channelled shifts on “My Feathers Need Cleaning” and the tone poem of “Beautiful And Pointless” wordlessly whirring.
Great to see the Dirt Eaters EP added. One of the best things HNIA have done, of which “Is This the Way the Tigers Do?” and the psychedelic shimmer of “We Hold the Land In Great Esteem” are two of their best-ever tracks. Yeah, the title track is good, and so are the others, but the sonically violent “Tigers” wins hands down, coupled with Karen Neal’s pyscho-killer verbose, jutting up nicely to the flipped-coin contrast of “Great Esteem”, a smooth sliver of musicality that melts in the ear, feels like a protest song that would work wonders on the greediest of hearts.
Mouth by Mouth
Taking the ethereal to splatter Technicolor, the third instalment is still a complete revelation. Free reign hitting the profane, the previous sprawling nature turned ultra-focused and finely honed. The illuminated richness of that cover artwork hitting a conceptual high. The skewered pop aesthetic of “Baby Fish Mouth” and “Lip” slam right in there, jigsawing super-bright and frenetically fried on the first, the latter radiating this sugary sunlight.
The remaining tracks soaking up that sizzle, even when violently poked and distorted this clash of raw and refined became a brilliantly bruising thing. Thematically hungry and spiralling from everywhere, the exceptional imagery and engaging wordplay is more than matched by the unexpected twists and turns of the music.
The psychedelic dusting of “Dirt Eaters” all sepia-nuanced smoothness levitating into some glowing pyrotechnics. The original ending, “Homesick Blues”, detaching you from reality on a Native American chant, evaporating into the gritty thrust of a launching rocket that has you feeling as if it’s you breaking through the atmosphere to an angelic chorus before suddenly erupting into a sweet lilting song.
A visionary masterpiece from start to finish, and my fav of this trilogy (most played too) — a successful template that stood them in great stead for the next two albums to come. As with the rest, an incredible amount of bonus material is added here too. Still digesting it to be honest — a collection of ambient shivers, sweet songs and sketches, with some diamonds in the rough Mouth by Mouth demos that complete this extraordinary journey.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
