Vampire Hands - Me And You Cherry Red
ARTIST.....: Vampire Hands
TITLE......: Me And You Cherry Red
LABEL......: Peppermint Coffins
URL........: http://www.myspace.com/vampirehands
RIP DATE...: Apr-08-2008
STORE DATE.: Mar-21-2008
GENRE......: Indie
QUALITY....: VBR / 44.1Hz / Joint-Stereo
SIZE.......: 32,1 MB
Track Listing:
01 - Statuette 03:21
02 - No Fun 02:44
03 - Heat-Fire 03:28
04 - Safe Word 02:50
05 - Friendship Road 03:27
06 - Cathedral Blues One 01:48
07 - Cathedral Blues Two 04:40
08 - Me And You Cherry Red 02:33
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24:51 min
Release Notes:
http://freedom-from.com
While the other "Vampire" band also earned the Weekly Release
Spotlight honor not too long ago, this is the band who more
rightly deserves to have the mythic creature of the night in their
moniker. Darkness, seduction, blood-soaked, and stealthy all
describe the Minneapolis quartet's music perfectly. To create an
even more fitting and creepy image, picture the elongated yellow-
nailed, powder white digits of an undead hand wrapping slowly
around an imminent victim's smooth and ripe throat - this is the
eerily hypnotic and frighteningly captivating world of Vampire
Hands and their new release Me and You Cherry Red. The band never
bites and kills - they don't cater to the average listener's need
for flash bang theatrics. For Vampire Hands, the sneaking and the
foreplay are the cornerstones to a great art rock sound.
At once deeply ominous and undeniably entertaining, the short 25
jam-packed minutes of primitive psych-horror rock follows 2007's
Virgin Dust American Lips with fierce, satisfying results. One
might even argue that in only a year, the band has progressed into
more textured and expansive territory. Placing percussion at the
forefront of their music, both literally on stage with Alex Rose's
drumkit and co-singer Colin Johnson's floor tom in the audience's
faces and audibly on their latest recording, they have been able
to subtly interweave their vocal duels and exchanges and reverbed
-to-burning-hell guitars through the percussion rather that
strictly underneath it or chaotically alongside it. It also feels
more spacious this time around, allowing for numbers like
"Cathedral Blues One" to breathe before exploding in slow motion
on the subsequent track.
An ambient cacophony of ghostly saxophones also crawl in and out
of the album's title track along with electronic keyboard
skitters, hinting at an even more mature and experimentally
orchestral future for this new pride of the Twin Cities.
Admittedly their sound doesn't follow the slam-dunk success model
of that other Vampire band, but later down the line, these guys
could easily catch fire with their successful combination of
tribally mesmerizing rhythms ("Friendship Road") with a dirty
garage ethic ("Safe Word"). What's most refreshing about Vampire
Hands, however, is the fact that they manage to do it without ever
sounding cute or directly inspired by any one sound. This is the
stuff of local lore, not postmodern hype. Here's hoping the future
of these pale coffin-dwelling hands follow the legendary path of a
Nosferatu or Dracula, not a Corey Feldman movie. (www.radiok.org)