Artist.......: Our Brothers the native
Album........: Make amends for we are merely vessels
Label........: fatcat
Genre........: Indie
Catnr........: n/a
source.......: CDDA
rip.date.....: Feb-29-2008
str.date.....: Feb/Mar-2008
quality......: VBR/44.1Hz/Joint-Stereo
Url..........: n/a
track title time
01. Rejoice 11:11
02. As they fell beneath us 07:32
03. We are the living 06:02
04. Trees part I 12:23
05. Trees part II 08:40
06. Younger 08:29
07. Untitled 10:05
08. The multitudes are dispersing 13:57
Runtime 78:19 min
Size 83,4 MB
Release Notes:
Our Brother The Native is John Michael Foss
(guitar, drums/percussion, piano, bass), Joshua
Bertram (guitar, bowed banjo, sounds/samples,
synth, vocals ) and Chaz Knapp (piano, guitar,
bass) - three young Americans (two aged 17, one 19)
who we discovered towards the end of 2005. Released
in July 2006, the bandÆs debut album, æTooth and
ClawÆ, formed a thrilling, beautifully jumbled gush
of ideas and emotions û its campfire clap-alongs,
skewed vocals, and use of circuit-bent childrenÆs
toys seeing them coming on like the kid brothers of
Animal Collective or CocoRosie. Following on from
that release, yet marking a major shift and forming
very much its own space, æMake Amends, For We Are
Merely VesselsÆ is a bold and expansive album that
ebbs and flows with huge power and considerable
skill.
The eight songs here clock in at between six and
fourteen minutes each and take their cues more from
expansive post-rock / noise rather than any freaked
folk scene. Self-recorded in JoshÆs dimly-lit
Michigan basement between May û December 2006, they
were aided by Kayleen Nilsson on viola, a
schoolfriend who has been in the band as an
additional member for shows and some recording for
the past year. Where the previous album was all
jagged / ruptured songcraft, æMake AmendsàÆ is a
much more fluid, immersive affair, a dense weave of
layered (and partially buried) sounds worth a
deliberate and slow building grasp of dynamics.
Devoid of regular verse / chorus structuring, its
songs sprawl out and unfurl with their own
particular logic, mixing rich drones and flickering
detail with brief but swollen, almost anthemic
bursts of emotion, and the simmering threat of
explosion. At different points it recalls the likes
of Sigur R≤s, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Stars Of
The Lid, Popol Vuh, or Black Dice circa æBeaches
and CanyonsÆ.
Whilst æTooth and ClawÆ was recorded and pieced
together through internet to-ing and fro-ing,
before Josh had even met Chaz and John Michael, let
alone played any shows, æMake AmendsÆ was carefully
planned out. Before recording, the band had been
playing these songs together live for over a year,
allowing them to change shape and grow from show to
show (a process thatÆs ongoing), and had a good
idea of how they wanted them to sound on record. As
Chaz says ôI feel this record shows who we are more
now, instead of who we were trying to beö and Josh
expands - ôthis sound has come much more naturally
to us. Conceptually, it had so much more thought
put into it than æTooth x%x% ClawÆ, and recording
took about year overall, recording bits of songs
here and thereà We tried to keep this album much
like our live shows, in the sense that we were
creating a sonic tide that came in and out, with
waves of sound building up slowly, and then finally
coming to a huge crescendo and then calm again. We
definitely didnÆt overdo these songs, they are
pretty much what we would play live - we didnÆt
orchestrate them and use smoke and mirrors to jazz
the songs up. ItÆs pretty straightforward, more
about honest sound, and bearing your flaws and
creating tensionàö
With less organic instrumentation and much more
electronics, processed samples and sounds on this
album than previously, the introduction of a synth
gave the album a colder, darker edge. æThe
Multitudes Are DispersingÆ and æAs They Fell
Beneath UsÆ feature an old piano in JoshÆs house.
æYoungerÆ, features an old cassette recording of
Josh (then aged just 4!) playing piano and his mum
and dad asking him to sing songs for his
grandfather who was in hospital at the time with
cancer. æTooth and ClawÆ featured old samples of
the same grandfather talking and singing, so it
keeps a family link, a subconscious ongoing theme.
The artwork features photos of the bandÆs families,
and the album as a whole bears a far more personal
intent. Chaz explains its subtext as being about
öthe emotional connection between us as
individuals, us as a band, and between our loved
onesà an album about internal struggles, human
emotions and how we deal with one another.ö You
might also hear a darker, much more youthful
aggression and angst.
Brilliantly controlled and hugely ambitious for a
group so young, æMake Amends..Æ is a deep and
powerful album that deserves your attention.
--
Europe out/15.02/26.02
USA out 11.03