The bringing together of Montreal’s Big|Brave and Portland’s The Body has produced a gratifying collision culminating in a series of tales taking in slow, ancient folk and creeping, hypnotic post-metal in equal measure, laying them bare and then piling noise and heartache into the mix to provide an album that enthrals ever more with repeated listens.
On Leaving None But Small Birds, this temporary seven-piece has discovered how to plumb the depths of despair with a sombre, limping rhythm and a frail vocal at the end of its tether. Their repetitive opening salvo is lovely in its drone-like insistence, but it is the voice that gets under your skin; at points strangely desperate, with feelings surfing on a wave of violin, and at others parched and elemental, as if existing outside of time.
These tales of lost children and broken hearts demanding something unusual, a voice that speaks from nature and history, while a swagger reminiscent of The Bad Seeds carries it capably out into the open. The rhythm section surges, but is doomy and foreboding; and there is something about the aura that brings to mind the old Baltimore band Love Life, but in a more ragged, mountainous way, with the violin curling like distant smoke seen across impassable ravines. There is a simplicity to the drumming here which is utterly hypnotic, while the lapping chords and looseness and mania of the voice feels like somebody taking themselves into exile in the desert. The tales are heartbreaking in places; the story of child labour, “Hard Times”, is an extraordinary feat with its disorientating harmonium and the laboured voice repeating and repeating “hard times in the old mill”, while the sparse but bewildering music echoes the mental anguish. The voice, utterly beyond hope, is smothered in filthy, rumbling distortion towards the end as if a fire were consuming the haggard remains of the mill.At points, it is reminiscent of an Appalachian Spacemen 3, the simplicity of the riffs and the purpose contained therein driving the songs deep, while the voice is pure country despair; but with a tinge of proper Gothic darkness that draws it away from the usual. The subjects range from spending the rest of your life searching for a lost love to babes abandoned in a wood, and even in the token love song, it is a love of obsession and mania. In fact, that track is stripped of all excess and carried by a monotone banjo line that highlights the ancient-sounding voice that tugs desperately at the heart.
There is a touch of Earth or SunnO))) in the overblown guitars of the final track, where the babes are abandoned; but this is a track of two definite halves, with the blistering guitar cutting a swathe for the voice to alight half way through and tell the tale with a bare accompaniment, sparse drums intoning like a death march as the album crawls to a bitter end.Leaving None But Small Birds is an amazing and emotional journey, and one which benefits hugely from this collaboration. The two bands bring out the best in each other, and it allows the listener to wallow in the drama and madness contained within.
-Mr Olivetti-
