Artist: Willard Grant Conspiracy
Album: Ghost Republic
Bitrate: 220kbps avg
Quality: EAC Secure Mode / LAME 3.98.4 / -V0 / 44.100Khz
Label: Loose Music
Genre: Indie
Size: 67.85 megs
PlayTime: 0h 40min 46sec total
Rip Date: 2013-09-06
Store Date: 2013-09-06
Track List:
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01. Above The Treeline 2:27
02. Perry Wallis 3:22
03. Parsons Gate Reunion 3:02
04. The Only Child 2:34
05. Ghost Republic 1:40
06. Rattle And Hiss 3:37
07. Take No Place 2:03
08. Good Morning Wadlow 5:22
09. Piece Of Pie 3:03
10. The Early Hour 4:55
11. Incident At Mono Lake 4:16
12. New Year's Eve 1:15
13. Oh We Wait 3:10
Release Notes:
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Having slimmed down to the duo of David Michael Curry and Robert Fisher and
having relocated from Boston to the California desert you might expect that
things might change, that the music might become more parched and dessicated,
pared back: and it is. The basics are the same, the deep rich baritone voice and
the moaning creak of the violin, at times it resembles the super-eight
soundscapes of the Dirty Three, a kind of chamber music for Death Valley.
The record resembles the desert that birthed it, almost colourless. There's a
limited palette of sound, mostly just acoustic guitar and violin, the moods
shift like sands disturbed by hot desert winds. It is a concept piece about an
abandoned town and as such the music fits beautifully, perfectly capturing the
creak and sawing of swaying sun-bleached timbers, Fisher's voice, as ever, deep
and eternal, a diurnal force. 'The Early Hour' starts with the gently dawning of
acoustic guitars before the violin erupts shattering the calm like a rusty
hinge, add in the clanking sounds of a workshop and impressionistic squalls of
electric guitar added like paint to a canvas, thick malleable dollops of it, it
is a wonderfully atmospheric piece.
It's a mostly subdued and elegiac record, full of mood, of creeping shade,
everything is done sparingly as though each element is scarce it is eleven
tracks before 'Incident at Mono Lake' sprinkles in a few piano notes like gold
dust from an abandoned mine and electric guitars scuds through on a few songs
like dark roiling thunderheads. The closest they get to something that might
resemble earlier more expansive incarnations is the closing 'Oh We Wait' it has
that gently propulsive feel of their best work, it builds with sly hypnotics
using repetition to brilliant effect.
Somewhat more atypical is the Curry-penned 'Piece of Pie', which aside from his
distinctive violin sound, functions like a drifter pitching up in the ghost
town, adding some humanity to the stark beauty. The whole record is a brave move
and one that pays off, the sparse melodies seem rich in the bleached landscape,
the atmosphere dominates, the songs are like song-poems, a contemporary take on
the dustbowl, with the humanity of Steinbeck and the visual eye of Ansel Adams.