Bedhead
Transaction De Novo

"The ability to make good use of my resources decreases when their number increases".

That's how Bresson's notes on cinema begin. With a reflection that the Kadane brothers, Matt and Bubba, of Bedhead, seem to adopt as their own. The album opens with a bass line that seems to brush against silence rather than trace a melody. To clear the slate and simultaneously mark the path on which the guitar, plucked almost like an acoustic, will take its first steps shortly. But it isn't acoustic, and in the rarefaction of sounds the Fender's timbre has its metallic roundness that makes it a tactile sensation as well as an acoustic one.

Before "Exhume", the opening track, closes, the voice and the tinkling sound of a vibraphone will come into play, and it will be a surprise, the discovery that an album doesn't necessarily divide into songs and instrumental pieces, that the voice can appear to articulate a few short phrases and add an instrumental color without in any way stealing the scene from the textures of guitar, bass, and drums. "More than ever" is a crescendo that manages to be dramatic in the slow layering of instruments without ever exploding or raising its voice. Reiteration and slow variation are typical compositional modes of post-rock (derived from minimalism) but Bedhead never sacrifices a strongly melodic foundation to this structure. It's just that the melody is absorbed and whispered anxieties that blend well with the spiral-like progression of the instruments. "Parade" showcases the three guitars playing on the album, and only then does one realize that the guitars were always three, even in the most rarefied tracks. Three guitars with three distinctive voices. Not three guitars to play more notes or to entangle the threads. Three clear and simple guitars to engage in a dialectic of nuances translated into different finger pressures on the strings, greater tendency to arpeggio or distortion. When "Extramundane" starts with a lively drum beat and the sung phrasing keeps pace without relinquishing its lightness, it's finally clear: no formal premise for Bedhead. Not slowness as a style. Not rarefaction as a stance. Not narcolepsy as a signature.

"Psychosomatica" begins immediately with a powerful riff and the voice, abandoning the whisper of previous tracks, full and assured. Even the dogma of the crescendo with such an opening goes by the wayside. Every song is a re-foundation of sound. Starting from scratch and adding only what's needed. What results will be valid for the duration of that track, a fruit matured without forcing, an object polished with dedication. The paradox is that no album seems as cohesive as this one where each song is constructed in a place without memory. Bedhead records by playing their albums like "live in studio". I wonder if similar living musical organisms could emerge otherwise... I forgot to mention the sources or possible references of this sound, only that... I'm sorry, I've never listened to Aeolian harp players at the dawn of humanity.

p.s.

while I drown in the guitar tremolo that in the final piece almost sounds like a cello, I listen to the words sung by Matt Kadane and I feel a bit ashamed to hear on his lips the perfect review of the album:

"When to be ashamed is to be defined/and all this self-awareness the blind led by the blind/an empty conscience is sensitivity"