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Rating:
A striking debut in 2007, with that "Sea Of The Dying Dhow" that no one expected and to which no one remained indifferent. The basic formula was always the same, on the post-core-ish-go-ahead, long and annoying songs, yet there was one detail that set them apart from the troubled chaos of the genre: brightness.
(I just noticed the phonetic similarity between "post-core-ish" and another word that I won't mention)
Contrary to all their sonic counterparts, who do their utmost to display their pessimism and annoyance towards life and its mal de vivre, the *shels atmospheres had something, a certain something, which paradoxically suggested feelings of optimism and joie de vivre.
This new album was ready back in 2008, a year after their debut, but for reasons we are not privy to, they postponed it to 2011, defying delays and Tool.
When I took it, the length immediately caught my eye: about a Pentecost and a half. Or if you prefer, 80 minutes. Or better yet, an hour and twenty damn minutes.
The good news is that this album is so cool and trippy that you won't even notice it.
The other nice thing is that they are almost uncategorizable. If in the first album the death guitars prevailed over the rest, here there will be maybe two or three heavy or post-core passages at best.
Post-rock? Not really, there's the occasional clean dlun-dlun guitar here and there, but to call it post-rock...
Folk? Quite so, they had announced a shift in this direction and they kept their promises. Many somewhat droopy but gorgeously beautiful acoustic parts just the same.
Moreover, they have accentuated their sunny vein; in fact, let's say that this is a summer album. One of those to listen to on a summer evening, in some grassy expanse, under a starry sky, with a beer and a pack of cigarettes to keep you company.
Overall, it is a multifaceted and multicolored brick, with different facets, and that's something I can't help but enjoy.
But the particular feature that wins out over everything else is the disarming simplicity of the melodies. So simple, yet not trivial, that when you listen to them, you wonder "how come I never thought of that?" and consequently feel like an idiot.
And then the choral use of the voice. That's beautiful and used very well. Sometimes epic choruses, like in the title track, which seems like the soundtrack to `The Last of the Mohicans`. Sometimes choruses that come close to being moving, like in `Butterflies (On Luci's Way)`, which, instead, feels like being in church during a funeral. But perhaps this is my deviation because I was listening to this song after my grandmother's funeral.
And in the end, I didn't even feel like writing a review.
In fact, this is not a review, it's crap. I didn't want to write about it and bang my head, I just wanted to point out the album because I find it beautiful and those guys deserve it. But I had to put in a bit of nonsense as a side dish.
Peace and love, in short.
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