Loving the swagger of the guitars here, the knuckled licks swimming the percussive candour, that tasty swoon clinging to every note. That unmistakable Ft. Lake glow about its gills, the momentum itchy-feet switching, a Hendrix fixation swapped for a pantheon of ’70s muscle with dips into the Nice Day EP‘s “Crushed Upon The Corner” jives. If this was an anonymous white label, a question would be tickling my head excitingly with whispers of possibility — is this His Name is Alive? A question quashed by that unmistakable sweetness of vocal that sways the barometer completely in caps-locked YESes. I’ve been a fan of the band since their Livonia days, and I’ve got to say this is another feather in Warren Defever (a company’s) cap. Penned as a rock opera of sorts, it’s a Hammer House re-imagining without any Valkyrie wobbling, the rough storyline falling around a woman discovering that she’s pregnant with twins, one of which is evil. Through various rituals she hopes to rid herself of the demon baby without harming the other, a pencil-sketched pretext handsomely filled in by musical playfulness and lyrical weaves.
Acoustic strums introduce the second track, “See You In A Minute,” a beautifully-recorded drip of strings before chugging out a jigger-jag of electric and high-energy percussion, the vocals skating smoothly over the agitation distance-run in flamboyant fretworks. Warren’s magpie mind forges new synapses from the past, a spin in blaring colours. It’s deliriously hot, that bass rattling beneath the vocal doubles, saxophone injections scaffolding the intensity pyramid higher… suddenly snapping off at its zenith for “I’m Getting Alone” to shimmer-vex a Beach Boy‘s oeuvre. A drama that shunts the tracks together, blurs the album’s diversions, keeps the surprises coming, sneaking in a bit of Black Sabbath patter and a (maybe unintentional) homage to The Sweeney, that rather lovely water-treading and sparking acousticka of “African Violet Casts A Spell.”
Naturally I’m more than a bit biased, but there’s lots to love here, snipping at your emotions in mix and match combos, subtle ulcerations of weirdness everywhere bespeckled in overdubbed sensations, vocal gymnastics. That constant peppering of light and dark, those sliding doors begetting oases of shimmering glitter that literally melt in your ear as on “I Will Disappear You;” and of course the wavering willow of sheer singability, weaving a hypno-hold on the whole patchwork. Brilliant stuff that has me itching to see a staged version.-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
