Themes - War Over The Great Plains
ARTIST.....: Themes
TITLE......: War Over The Great Plains
LABEL......: AUDIO LIBERATION SOCIETY
URL........: http://www.themesmusic.com
RIP DATE...: May-25-2008
STORE DATE.: 000-00-2007
GENRE......: Indie
QUALITY....: VBR / 44.1Hz / Joint-Stereo
SIZE.......: 84,7 MB
Track Listing:
01 - At Sunrise 00:40
02 - Punching Parade 05:14
03 - Reservation Land 05:35
04 - Devil's Tower 05:18
05 - A Different Story 04:40
06 - Wave To The Ocean 04:55
07 - The Soldier Trade 02:02
08 - Maplines 04:21
09 - Know Navigation 04:50
10 - Halls 05:56
11 - Epic World 05:22
12 - Goodbye Daylight 05:56
13 - I Can't Make You Believe 03:25
14 - Mopius Opus 04:17
─────
62:31 min
Release Notes:
http://www.myspace.com/themesthemesthemes
Minneapolis band Themes claims lots of P-town connections (from
Carcrashlander's Cory Gray to the dudes in Blitzen Trapper), but
you wouldn't really know it from its dark and oft-gothic sound.
The guy-girl duo also claims to play "folk rock," but the songs on
its latest full-length, War Over the Great Plains, employ plenty
of electric piano and guitar, theatrical vocals and an epic nature
that smacks more of metal than old Americana (think Faith No More
videos and you've got the right idea). Jacy McIntosh's deep roar
of a voice could've soundtracked something like Twister - all
forboding and mysterious and intense. Makes sense, then, that
Themes (which plans to move guess where this fall) lists "Mother
Nature's random acts of violence" as its only inspiration. Key-
tickler Kelsey Crawford, luckily, adds loftier, heavenly vocals to
all the drama, highlighting the songs' melodies and saving Themes
from suffocating in its own smoldering dark-rock fire.
AMY MCCULLOUGH. (www.localcut.wweek.com)
THEMES creates a lush soundscape of proto folk rock mixing thick
Baritone guitars, heavy piano driven arrangements, and fiercely
pensive rhythms, while male and female vocals intertwine, weaving
colorful blankets of stories filled with an ageless haunted insight,
that somehow, seems urgently necessary in todayÆs world. Drawing
comparisons to such greats as Nick Cave, M. Gira, Joni Mitchell,
Cat Stevens, and Neil Young. McIntosh and Crawford's latest album
"War Over The Great Plains" is over an hour of such intensly vivid
music that one might feel they are listening to a film score. When
it ends, one is left wanting to know more about the mysterious people
who make THEMES music.
What began Santa Rosa, CA, in the winter of 2006, as the collaboration
between Jacy McIntosh (ex-End Transmission, Askeleton, Ela) and Kelsey
Crawford (ex-Vox Vermillion). Returned to Minneapolis, with a developed
sound, to record their first full length "War Over The Great Plains".
As a whole, the album seems to be a sort protest piece, at times dealing
with the displacement of Midwestern native and folk cultures in an age
of modernity and capitalistic expansion. While in between, there lies a
certain unreachable beauty through the darkness, that is only spoken of
briefly before it dissappears again.
Now, THEMES enter new territory within their sound with multi
instrumentalists, Justin Burkhard (ex-Clair De Lune ) and Bryce Midas
Richardson. Who round out the music of THEMES as today's most promising
modern folk rock acts that just might have the power to stop a riot from
breaking out.... or could it be the power to insight one... I guess
weÆll find out.