The Silver Stairs of Ketchikan – Edeida

Lava Thief

Born from a Richard Brautigan poem of the same name, The Silver Stairs Of Ketchikan is a solo outlet of Thought Forms ringleader Charlie Romijn Barr. It’s always been an intimate, profoundly personal quest, often wrought in the improvised moment. Anybody that’s been lucky enough to see her live will testify to the witchy atmospheres she conjures, the abstracted emotions laid bare in looped violin, cello and guitar, and this latest offering gives the uninitiated a good idea of what they have been missing out on.

With the help of a few collaborators, the vision is as potent as ever, something the gutsy doomics of its opener “Old God’s Tongue” thoroughly demonstrates in page-torn lyrics and pummelling percussives. A tempest-like grip on your imagination propelled by Thought Form’s very own Guy Metcalfe, at its centre is a Valhalla-whipped voice, bold and enbrazened as this delicate piano threads the betweens like a glinting swallow caught in the curving swell, a sweetened melodic slowly serrating the encroaching silence.

This is epic, esurient, smites a new-found confidence, followed closely by the spiralling rub of “Golden” that panthers the pace in stark contrast. A sound that falls through the space, all tendril-teased and tapering as the guitar work flickers through your mind like an unpicked tapestry sticky with scenics. Two eye-opening tracks that lead to the darkened aperture of “Passager”, a ritualised summoning harking back to Charlie’s early oeuvre of humming drone and chanted abstracts. A hauntingly beautiful experience that sees her tonally perfect vocal arabesque into smokey orientals and kettling enfolds.

The album’s only instrumental “Child Smile Eyes” loosening things up in tigering clatter and gentle frets, masterfully echoing the track’s title in elevating vocalisations that firefly the lullabying scoop of those chords. A buoyant slice of optimism that the folksy saturate of the title track mirrors, spidering a vivid summery light filled with translucent truth back lit by Jim Barr’s synthy drone, its gentle sway euphorically opening out in colourful punches. A delicious dynamic that feeds you with the unexpected, infuses motive as the slow idyllic silk of “Pylon” slips its skin to step into an an ever-darkening canvas, a meditation on loneliness with a diaristic sting, where futility texturally contracts, weeps bittersweet reflection then reactively explodes.

The chiming cleft of that electric possessing Deej Dhariwal‘s trademark ferocity throwing forth the tortured sensuality of a questioning self-sending shivers straight down your spine. A brave inquisition that the spartan strum and vocal of “I Took” picks up from, cradling the broken limbs of memory, the transitory dotted line of loss, leaving the plainsong purity “Of Dried Grass; On The Ground” to close proceedings in a double-edged sword of looped cello drone and caustic shiver that evils an effervescent demise.

It’s clear to see this is a labour of love; the snaking interlock and arch of the instrumentation, the extraordinary detail that wraps every single track in a sophisticated use of light’n’shade that ensnares your focus so superbly. Without a doubt Edeida has real star quality, a muscled dynamic offering plenty of reward.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-