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Rating: The Crippled Black Phoenix mean so much to me. They are an unforgettable concert. They are a spring full of tough afternoons that needed to be diluted in music. They are, above all, a friend who is no longer here and who adored them. And who would have adored these notes too. To Malaika.
A supergroup can't help but write a superalbum. The Crippled Black Phoenix, mainly based on the quartet Justin Greaves (Electric Wizards) Dominic Aitchison (Mogwai) Joe Volk and Kostas Panagiotou, had already promised the release of a trilogy of endtime ballads suspended between genres, influences, and moods even before their debut two years ago (A Love Of Shared Disasters). Troubles during recording and complications with the label led to albums 2 and 3 being released together in a deluxe box set (for a total of 19 songs and about 2 hours of music) or anthologized in a sort of mini best of (200 Tons Of Bad Luck, 12 songs) reluctantly published to satisfy Geoff Barrow's Invada. Quite a mess.
And indeed, it's quite a mess, but a truly beautiful one, the collection of the two discs in the box set. Inside The Resurrectionists and Night Raider are Pink Floyd and Black Heart Procession, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Tom Waits, post-rock and dark folk, neo-prog and doom rock, Nordic epic and freak sentimentality, with excursions even into territories not covered in the debut, from Balkan folk (Bat Stack) to British folk (A Hymn For A Lost Soul), all flavored with lo-fi inserts, playful interludes, disconnected coda or beginnings, fragments of spoken word.
The sum of the two discs is labyrinthine, offering a sonic immersion from which it is difficult to emerge without impressions. Perhaps it's The Resurrectionists, more vocal, that offers the best insights, while Night Raider, including the massive suite Time Of Ye Life/Born For Nothing/Paranoid Arm of Narcolectic Empire (18 minutes, with a frenzied space-rock finale), moves mainly through instrumental spaces (excellent, among the sung pieces, Onward Ever downwards), reaching in I Am Free, Today I Perished an annihilation in balance between despair and serenity.
The Crippled Black Phoenix are epic, yet also introverted, always rustic to the point of pastiche. They evoke the great northern seas and green hills, only to retreat into huts that smell of wine and straw. They manage to combine a tumultuous darkness, with grunge shades (Rise Up And Fight, 444, Song For The Loved), with an almost clear relaxation. Tracks like 200 Tons Of Bad Luck or Little Step open up heart-wrenching nostalgia that was missing in their debut, and the former, in particular, with an accordion and church choirs, remains in the heart, even though it is where the bitterness becomes harsh and biting that the band gives their best (Burnt Reynolds, Human Nature Dictates The Downfall Of Humans: excellent orchestral finale).
It's hard to summarize in a few lines everything these discs express. The mine seems inexhaustible, and even after repeated listens, one finds new passages to discover, appreciates moments not noticed before, and is struck by a cello that was previously indifferent (those of Whissendine and Please Do Not Stay Here stand out immediately), finding a different melodic movement engraved within. Much to the chagrin of those who think that 'less is more'. The Crippled Black Phoenix have hit the mark again.
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