•
Rating:
In the Grand Carnival of the Post-Punk Revival of today, Lower have evidently opted to play the role of Bauhaus, carving out a difficult path that sees them shunning the more obvious solutions the genre can offer. “Seek Warmer Climes” is the intriguing debut in long play format for the latest very young band coming from Denmark.
Perhaps their music lacks the urgency that characterizes the proposal of their “stepbrothers” Iceage, but these four young men truly have the makings to leave a mark. Never before in this case do the individual elements count so much in shaping the overall sound. It starts with the disruptive unpredictable drumming of Anton Rothstein, continuing with the multiform clattering of the guitar by Simon Formann: a relentless duel that sees the six strings clash with the rhythm section in a triumph of dissonances and interrupted metrics. Bringing some order are the vigorous bass strokes by Kristian Emdal (also in Var, alongside other local scene figures, including Elias Ronnenfelt from Iceage). Completing the picture is the paranoiac singing by Adrian Toubro, who, while his timbre resembles mentor Peter Murphy, avoids the dark charming poses to dive into truly alienated soliloquies. Among his influences, he names figures like Scott Walker, Leonard Cohen, and Cornelis Vreeswijk (a Dutch singer-songwriter transplanted in Sweden, whose popularity I don't believe ever transcended his homeland).
Speaking of Bauhaus, then, it's no coincidence that the first two songs, “Another Life” and “Daft Persuasion,” both pervaded by an epileptic tribalism, reek of “In the Flat Field” from a mile away. But far from pedantically tracing the paths set by the masters, compared to other similar entities, Lower sound fresher and richer in inventiveness, if only because their offering shines with a research that aims at rhythmic/harmonic restlessness, structural deconstruction, and vocal distraction/alienation. In short, if we are facing relatively short songs (no less than ten in just thirty-four minutes), it doesn’t mean they conform to the worn-out verse/chorus standard. There's nothing anthemic in “Seek Warmer Climes,” and even if at first we aren’t struck by that guitar riff or pulsating rhythm/refrain, subsequent listens will reveal the merits and commitment of an ensemble that decides to guide us along a path more challenging at first, but increasingly rewarding as the journey progresses.
There's no point in citing one episode over another; this work should be viewed as a whole. However, it's pertinent to mention the long and tortuous “Expanding Horizons (Dar Es Salaam)”: in its seven minutes, it indeed has time and way to develop along the lines of an obsessive march where the slow yet always restless beat of the percussion is continuously shaken by the schizophrenia of the guitar, in constant battle with Toubro's vocal fibers, which try to master the chaos by weaving the only memorable refrain along the furrows of an invertebrate post-punk. Stripped of the noir aura typical of the dark-wave from a few decades ago, Lower’s music builds a concrete bridge between the end of the seventies and the present day: it does so by imposing itself as a fascinating fresco depicting not only the psychological degradation of a twenty-year-old in the 2010s, but also the sensations of anyone, young or not so young, who finds themselves disoriented and devoid of categories/resources in front of a destabilizing scenario hovering between a useless past and an uncertain and murky future.
Starting from the beautiful and unusual cover (a shot by Emdal himself), “Seek Warmer Climes,” also thanks to the support and visibility offered by a major label like Matador, is bound to attract the attention of genre enthusiasts and establish itself not only as another masterstroke by that Danish micro-scene proving to be very vibrant and full of promises, but also as one of the most interesting rock releases of this 2014 that is now drawing to a close certainly without having changed the fate of contemporary music history.
Perhaps their music lacks the urgency that characterizes the proposal of their “stepbrothers” Iceage, but these four young men truly have the makings to leave a mark. Never before in this case do the individual elements count so much in shaping the overall sound. It starts with the disruptive unpredictable drumming of Anton Rothstein, continuing with the multiform clattering of the guitar by Simon Formann: a relentless duel that sees the six strings clash with the rhythm section in a triumph of dissonances and interrupted metrics. Bringing some order are the vigorous bass strokes by Kristian Emdal (also in Var, alongside other local scene figures, including Elias Ronnenfelt from Iceage). Completing the picture is the paranoiac singing by Adrian Toubro, who, while his timbre resembles mentor Peter Murphy, avoids the dark charming poses to dive into truly alienated soliloquies. Among his influences, he names figures like Scott Walker, Leonard Cohen, and Cornelis Vreeswijk (a Dutch singer-songwriter transplanted in Sweden, whose popularity I don't believe ever transcended his homeland).
Speaking of Bauhaus, then, it's no coincidence that the first two songs, “Another Life” and “Daft Persuasion,” both pervaded by an epileptic tribalism, reek of “In the Flat Field” from a mile away. But far from pedantically tracing the paths set by the masters, compared to other similar entities, Lower sound fresher and richer in inventiveness, if only because their offering shines with a research that aims at rhythmic/harmonic restlessness, structural deconstruction, and vocal distraction/alienation. In short, if we are facing relatively short songs (no less than ten in just thirty-four minutes), it doesn’t mean they conform to the worn-out verse/chorus standard. There's nothing anthemic in “Seek Warmer Climes,” and even if at first we aren’t struck by that guitar riff or pulsating rhythm/refrain, subsequent listens will reveal the merits and commitment of an ensemble that decides to guide us along a path more challenging at first, but increasingly rewarding as the journey progresses.
There's no point in citing one episode over another; this work should be viewed as a whole. However, it's pertinent to mention the long and tortuous “Expanding Horizons (Dar Es Salaam)”: in its seven minutes, it indeed has time and way to develop along the lines of an obsessive march where the slow yet always restless beat of the percussion is continuously shaken by the schizophrenia of the guitar, in constant battle with Toubro's vocal fibers, which try to master the chaos by weaving the only memorable refrain along the furrows of an invertebrate post-punk. Stripped of the noir aura typical of the dark-wave from a few decades ago, Lower’s music builds a concrete bridge between the end of the seventies and the present day: it does so by imposing itself as a fascinating fresco depicting not only the psychological degradation of a twenty-year-old in the 2010s, but also the sensations of anyone, young or not so young, who finds themselves disoriented and devoid of categories/resources in front of a destabilizing scenario hovering between a useless past and an uncertain and murky future.
Starting from the beautiful and unusual cover (a shot by Emdal himself), “Seek Warmer Climes,” also thanks to the support and visibility offered by a major label like Matador, is bound to attract the attention of genre enthusiasts and establish itself not only as another masterstroke by that Danish micro-scene proving to be very vibrant and full of promises, but also as one of the most interesting rock releases of this 2014 that is now drawing to a close certainly without having changed the fate of contemporary music history.
Loading comments slowly
