The For Carnation
Promised Works

No! Unfortunately, no! “Promised Works” is not a new work by The For Carnation. It is neither a miraculous find of previously unreleased material unearthed from some obscure depth of record archives, nor a live recording from an unspecified location in the United States.

Having said that, Touch and Go, the famous independent label from Chicago, has my applause for reintroducing and combining the two debut EPs (“Fight Songs” from ’95 and “Marshmallows” from ’96) into a single album by one of the most interesting bands of the nineties.

A creation of Brian McMahan, already the voice and guitar of Slint, the For Carnation managed to combine the “lightness” of a caressing instrumental minimalism where not a single note was wasted, with a unique emotional intensity where the feelings, rather than being expressed, were held back, generating great empathy with the listener who, trying to decipher them, inevitably ended up feeling them as their own.

The three tracks of “Fight Songs,” including the stuttering and almost joyful instrumental interlude of “How I Beat the Devil,” possess the same fragrance and harmony as one of Paul Verlaine's “Romanze senza parole.” The eloquent silences, the placid guitar arpeggios, the timid voice whispering its sensations to the wind, are delicate fragments of a soul in perpetual listening, and the splendid “Grace Beneath the Pines” almost seems like its diary written in the shade of a tree at the edge of the forest.

This fil rouge partially extends into “Marshmallows”: “On the Swing” and “Imyr, Marshmallow” are small and sweet lullabies that purify our spirit from the daily accumulated waste.

However, the tone changes with the agitated “I Wear the Gold”: an instrumental piece where the guitar riff is repeated in a loop with an almost sinusoidal motion where small but precise distortions and variations peek out in the peaks of tension, increasing the sense of danger. A true attack on the jugular, which unexpectedly fades into an understated arpeggio: the grip on the throat thus becomes a benevolent caress.

In the second part of the EP, the tones become much darker, as if McMahan somehow wants to reconnect to “Spiderland”: the masterpiece by Slint ended with the lacerating screams of a Dostoevskian man from the underground who slammed the door of his subterranean refuge.

Here instead (with the dark and hypnotic “Salo” and especially “Winter Lair”), it seems that this man, after a millennia-long slumber, has reopened that door and, with the stigmata of a new human awareness, wanders the city in a night as black as pitch illuminated only by vague tinkling sounds. The voice has become a soliloquy repeated like in a trance, and you can even hear what seems to be his faint electrocardiogram.

At dawn, sitting along the riverbanks, he remains waiting, with a little more willpower to live a life he did not choose, and listening to the concluding instrumental “Preparing to Receive You,” where the music seems fixed in exhausting stasis, we see him wait (in vain?) for something or someone to definitely shake him from his torpor.

The For Carnation, after these two EPs, would only release one more album, a self-titled one in 2000. That's why, as I said at the beginning: no! unfortunately, no! “Promised Works” is not their new work. But who knows, perhaps they too are waiting by the riverbank.