Albums of the Year! 1!

1. Deafheaven - Sunbather

Vibrato vs Tremolo

Pitch shift vs Volume

If film is the great emancipator, the truth that releases us to roam between ghosts and living men then music (and sound in general) is the divine ready to lift us to heaven and exaltation, a place full of memory and refraction.

And if that analogy rings true then in 2013, Deafheaven played the part of the deluded high priest.

A little background first. Black Metal (around which this floats) exists in clouds of dark chord changes, anger and Sweden.  This puts the band on the backfoot from the outset.  Purists with 'Anti-Liturgy' signs have eagled the move from what the hardcore present as the essence of the genre.

  'Dream House' opens with a shredding confident inverted third/ major pentatonic melange radio guitar noise progression that in seconds sets out the stall for a different usage of the 'template' of how things are meant to be here. Melded to a gorgeous guitar lick that lilts and seduces at every angle.  Percussion fills and then burst out leaving just open space to curve and engorge.

Tremolo.

"Hindered by sober restlessness. Submitting to the amber crutch. The theme in my aching prose. Fantasizing the sight of Manhattan; that pour of a bitter red being that escapes a thin frame. The rebirth of mutual love. The slipping on gloves to lay tenderly".  


We can't decipher these codes, a pretty silhouetteted metaphor for daily confused reflection.  A battle of materialism and altruistic contemplations. They aren't pragmatic manifestations of thought and desire but instead the idealistic visions of the 'American Dream' channeled through pure emotion via Central Park.

Moving on, the album plays the very straightforward, almost manipulative positioning trick of placing a "come-down" track after each epic (musically and length wise). So our couplets are  Dream House-Irresistable (9/3mins), Sunbather-Please Remember (10/6mins) and Vertigo/Windows (14/4mins).  Each post rock breathe out segueing seamlessly from epic to epic.  No doubt this is BIG music but it's big in a way that matters, not as a posturing statement but as an outpouring of idealised love, mature and retrospective.

Back to the earlier shuffling.  The position of an American band in black metal shoes is precarious.  First it alienates the hardcore group but it also has the power through composition to ensnare new pilgrims towards the Nordic shores.


Personally, I'm not particularly interested in all of that.  This isn't a gateway to an open field of wonders but moreso the field itself.  To me this is some sort of starburst black metal filled with shoe gaze, emo, screamo, post rock to name just a few influences.  What these 7 tracks represent are the purest form, the essence of what 2013 means to me.

A strivance for a perfect being, dressed with the putrid stench of dissolute crystal. 


Key Tracks: Vertigo, Dream House, Sunbather, Please Remember