Label: Speakerphone Format: 7″
Tucked away on this seven inch disc of transparent red plastic is one of Black Heart Procession‘s mini masterpieces of melancholic glorying in the sadness of things in general and the passing of time in particular. “Love Sings A Sunrise” coasts on a slow-turning beat and a lambent shimmer of electronic detritus, with Pall Jenkins‘s mournfoul voice declaiming his lost love as the band back up in the background, or possibly another room entirely. To the plangent chimes of a sad guitar, the song unwinds its sorrowful way to drown sorrows in booze and self-reproach, expressed quietly in the piano strokes of eventual rising redemption. It’s a throughly beautiful misery from a band who know exactly how to make the heart bleed without giving self-pity a bad name in the process, and one to be treasured.
B-side “Hideaway” is not quite up to the same standard, being a piano and string-stretching exercise in more Rock-formatted directions, but this is only by comparison with the perfection of “LSSR”. With some musical saw bowing to warble the unhappy bone and a propulsive chug through the chord changes, “Hideaway” offers a slightly brighter (in musical terms at least) outlook, and its brassy inflections swing the changes neatly to a soaring conclusion as Jenkins sings and signs his creaky heart away.
-Linus Tossio-
