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Rating:
Let's make it clear right away that we won't have any more masterpieces.
And I'm not talking about Esben and the Witch; I'm speaking in general. Are you familiar with the spark of talent? Yes, that spark is still possible, visible in the unripe shell of emerging bands, but then the next step is always the formulaic album that perfects the formula but tames the talent, while half of the inspiration gets lost along the way. Between the inspired but unripe album and the mature yet formulaic one, the crucial missing link is disappearing: the masterpiece (or series of masterpieces) that existed in between.
If this is to be our fate, then welcome a suicidal album like "A New Nature," finally a sign of vitality from these young rock bands that just can't replicate the glory of their ancestors (partly, to be fair, due to a record market with a completely new face, a market that operates with completely different communication and distribution logics).
Let's take a step back. Last year, Esben and the Witch with "Wash the Sins Not Only the Face" caught the attention of the specialized press and (art-house) audiences, laying the foundations for interesting future developments: the album showed a balance, awareness, and skill in blending distant genres and influences that were truly uncommon for a band formed just a few years earlier (in 2008, to be exact), executing their second release; between darkwave and sophisticated rock, dreamlike atmospheres and interior landscapes, "Wash the Sins Not Only the Face" was certainly improvable, but the bulk, as they say, was substantially done: it would have sufficed to refine/perfect that formula with a more focused production, using even more refined arrangements, leveraging a better-defined personality and increased technical expertise. Easy, right?
But instead, nothing of the sort! Forget everything just described because the new "A New Nature," which also marks the transition from the old label Matador to the new Nostromo (owned by the band themselves), is an entirely different story!
Out with the keyboards, out with the electronic beats, out with the polished arrangements, in short, practically everything that was the identity apparatus of the Brighton trio, out with all this and into Steve Albini! Yes, you heard right, Steve "give-me-anything-and-I'll-turn-it-into-noise" Albini, whom I never considered a hero, by the way. Albini knows his stuff, though, but his hand on the console is felt, and magically (to stay on the witch theme), the polychromy of the Esben sound, all those nuances that made their proposal intriguing, reduces to just two colors: the gray/black of the fills and the gray/white of the voids, the two dimensions where it limps Rachel Davies' witchy voice, a sort of mournful and visionary Beth Gibbons, the last point of contact between the band's past and present, which today, more than ever, escapes any definition, approximating to a battered female post-rock, including, among its references, the latest Portishead and the usual PJ Harvey.
Mystery, mysticism, contemplation thus give way to a raw, wild, instinctual mood made of tribalism and vaguely post-hardcore-derived guitar assaults: an attitudinal upheaval that is even more surprising, considering no lineup changes occurred. Esben, in fact, remains the same three: Davies (also on bass) + Thomas Fisher (guitars), and Daniel Coperman (drums, electronics?). They say it was in the air, they felt it, they were finally mature enough to do it. To do what? To be truer, to strip away a superstructure made of complex sounds and convoluted arrangements, to free themselves from unnecessary frills, to delve deep and see what lay beneath, to reveal their “new nature.” Did they overstep the mark? A bit, yes, as you can't become a indie-noiser overnight: some passages miss the mark a bit, and it perhaps ends up being a tad too drawn out (eight compositions totaling fifty-six minutes), but Fisher manages well 70% of the time, Coperman on the drums is a first-rate muddler, but his simple and direct drumming suits what the three want to convey today. And then there's Davies' voice, not without flaws but undeniably charming, the usual chant that goes down and up in its unique wavering motion.
The reverberated arpeggio that opens the album solo is misleading regarding what follows: when the kick starts beating time and a hyper-distorted bass urges on explosively, the true stature of the torrent-like opening track “Press Heavenwards” (ten minutes), a krautian ride deriving from Neu!, emerges, soured by Davies' ghostly lament (a sort of female David Tibet, nightingale-like voice haunted by Swans-like obsessions); the dramatic slowdown at the end, made of disconnected beats and a woeful post-rock-style arpeggio, outlines scenarios teetering between mysterious rites and forlorn martial tones. It demonstrates that adopting the “alternative” verb doesn't lead to the absolute loss of atmosphere, which remains rarefied and ancestral despite heavy use of electric guitars. The languid ballad "Dig Your Fingers In" (first single, with a video, to say the least, amateurish) would almost take us back to the old days, if not for the little noise finale, which reaffirms what will be the new course's stylistic hallmark. A stylistic hallmark confirmed and strongly reiterated by the hysterical tribalism erupting in the subsequent “No Dogs,” opened and closed by nervous rhythms and robust electric guitars (with an epic finale by Davies), but in its core recovers those soft and intimate tones that are inevitably the flip side of the coin.
The fourteen acidic minutes of the suite “The Jungle” and the subsequent (almost instrumental) “Those Dreadful Hammers” host the solemn fluttering of guest Samuel Barton's trumpet, which in this context (amid drones and guitar rustles) feels very Ulver/Sunn O))) (see how you disdain them when they're actually standards?). Next follows that jewel of electrified blues that answers to the name “Wooden Star,” where the desperate Davies and her subdued companions deliver their best performance, proving that it is still in the “sordid soliloquy” dimension that they continue to excel. However, once the surprise effect wears off, the spell breaks (was the leap perhaps too great?, was the change of course too abrupt and sudden?), revealing some cracks in the facade: it's tough making it to the end of nearly eight minutes in “Blood Teaching” (another skewed ballad, half noise chaos, which by now no longer surprises), while the less than two minutes of the closing “Bathed in Light” (sole voice and guitar this time, contrasting the electric explosions of the previous track) will sound quite bland.
At times exhilarating, at others not entirely focused, “A New Nature” could have undoubtedly come out better, but it remains a commendable effort by a young, promising band to put themselves on the line and determinedly pursue their artistic needs. A rare thing these days.
And I'm not talking about Esben and the Witch; I'm speaking in general. Are you familiar with the spark of talent? Yes, that spark is still possible, visible in the unripe shell of emerging bands, but then the next step is always the formulaic album that perfects the formula but tames the talent, while half of the inspiration gets lost along the way. Between the inspired but unripe album and the mature yet formulaic one, the crucial missing link is disappearing: the masterpiece (or series of masterpieces) that existed in between.
If this is to be our fate, then welcome a suicidal album like "A New Nature," finally a sign of vitality from these young rock bands that just can't replicate the glory of their ancestors (partly, to be fair, due to a record market with a completely new face, a market that operates with completely different communication and distribution logics).
Let's take a step back. Last year, Esben and the Witch with "Wash the Sins Not Only the Face" caught the attention of the specialized press and (art-house) audiences, laying the foundations for interesting future developments: the album showed a balance, awareness, and skill in blending distant genres and influences that were truly uncommon for a band formed just a few years earlier (in 2008, to be exact), executing their second release; between darkwave and sophisticated rock, dreamlike atmospheres and interior landscapes, "Wash the Sins Not Only the Face" was certainly improvable, but the bulk, as they say, was substantially done: it would have sufficed to refine/perfect that formula with a more focused production, using even more refined arrangements, leveraging a better-defined personality and increased technical expertise. Easy, right?
But instead, nothing of the sort! Forget everything just described because the new "A New Nature," which also marks the transition from the old label Matador to the new Nostromo (owned by the band themselves), is an entirely different story!
Out with the keyboards, out with the electronic beats, out with the polished arrangements, in short, practically everything that was the identity apparatus of the Brighton trio, out with all this and into Steve Albini! Yes, you heard right, Steve "give-me-anything-and-I'll-turn-it-into-noise" Albini, whom I never considered a hero, by the way. Albini knows his stuff, though, but his hand on the console is felt, and magically (to stay on the witch theme), the polychromy of the Esben sound, all those nuances that made their proposal intriguing, reduces to just two colors: the gray/black of the fills and the gray/white of the voids, the two dimensions where it limps Rachel Davies' witchy voice, a sort of mournful and visionary Beth Gibbons, the last point of contact between the band's past and present, which today, more than ever, escapes any definition, approximating to a battered female post-rock, including, among its references, the latest Portishead and the usual PJ Harvey.
Mystery, mysticism, contemplation thus give way to a raw, wild, instinctual mood made of tribalism and vaguely post-hardcore-derived guitar assaults: an attitudinal upheaval that is even more surprising, considering no lineup changes occurred. Esben, in fact, remains the same three: Davies (also on bass) + Thomas Fisher (guitars), and Daniel Coperman (drums, electronics?). They say it was in the air, they felt it, they were finally mature enough to do it. To do what? To be truer, to strip away a superstructure made of complex sounds and convoluted arrangements, to free themselves from unnecessary frills, to delve deep and see what lay beneath, to reveal their “new nature.” Did they overstep the mark? A bit, yes, as you can't become a indie-noiser overnight: some passages miss the mark a bit, and it perhaps ends up being a tad too drawn out (eight compositions totaling fifty-six minutes), but Fisher manages well 70% of the time, Coperman on the drums is a first-rate muddler, but his simple and direct drumming suits what the three want to convey today. And then there's Davies' voice, not without flaws but undeniably charming, the usual chant that goes down and up in its unique wavering motion.
The reverberated arpeggio that opens the album solo is misleading regarding what follows: when the kick starts beating time and a hyper-distorted bass urges on explosively, the true stature of the torrent-like opening track “Press Heavenwards” (ten minutes), a krautian ride deriving from Neu!, emerges, soured by Davies' ghostly lament (a sort of female David Tibet, nightingale-like voice haunted by Swans-like obsessions); the dramatic slowdown at the end, made of disconnected beats and a woeful post-rock-style arpeggio, outlines scenarios teetering between mysterious rites and forlorn martial tones. It demonstrates that adopting the “alternative” verb doesn't lead to the absolute loss of atmosphere, which remains rarefied and ancestral despite heavy use of electric guitars. The languid ballad "Dig Your Fingers In" (first single, with a video, to say the least, amateurish) would almost take us back to the old days, if not for the little noise finale, which reaffirms what will be the new course's stylistic hallmark. A stylistic hallmark confirmed and strongly reiterated by the hysterical tribalism erupting in the subsequent “No Dogs,” opened and closed by nervous rhythms and robust electric guitars (with an epic finale by Davies), but in its core recovers those soft and intimate tones that are inevitably the flip side of the coin.
The fourteen acidic minutes of the suite “The Jungle” and the subsequent (almost instrumental) “Those Dreadful Hammers” host the solemn fluttering of guest Samuel Barton's trumpet, which in this context (amid drones and guitar rustles) feels very Ulver/Sunn O))) (see how you disdain them when they're actually standards?). Next follows that jewel of electrified blues that answers to the name “Wooden Star,” where the desperate Davies and her subdued companions deliver their best performance, proving that it is still in the “sordid soliloquy” dimension that they continue to excel. However, once the surprise effect wears off, the spell breaks (was the leap perhaps too great?, was the change of course too abrupt and sudden?), revealing some cracks in the facade: it's tough making it to the end of nearly eight minutes in “Blood Teaching” (another skewed ballad, half noise chaos, which by now no longer surprises), while the less than two minutes of the closing “Bathed in Light” (sole voice and guitar this time, contrasting the electric explosions of the previous track) will sound quite bland.
At times exhilarating, at others not entirely focused, “A New Nature” could have undoubtedly come out better, but it remains a commendable effort by a young, promising band to put themselves on the line and determinedly pursue their artistic needs. A rare thing these days.
Applauded for courage.
Tracklist
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