Trollheart

Well, they're just meant to be autumn leaves, but whatever makes you happy and keeps you reading...

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Some time back, JosefK suggested I try this band and this song. To be fair, he may have meant the whole album, as this is the title track of same, but I'm not quite ready to leap into that yet, so let's just do that title track and see if he is on to something.

Title: Fourteen autumns and fifteen winters
Format: Track
Written by: Andy MacFarlane and James Graham
Performed by: The Twilight Sad
Genre: Post-Punk, Indie, Shoegaze
Taken from: The Twilight Sad album of the same name
Year: 2007
Acclaim: Again, although the album was feted I don't see anything about this particular track. It must be popular though, because when I typed in “The Twilight Sad” to YouTube it was the first result to come up.

Sounds like a steam train or something at the start, which sets up a nice ambience, then the guitars come in kind of slowly, coming and going, staggered and rising then falling back. Reminds me a little of what I heard of British Sea Power. Think it may be an instrumental. Very ... what's the word ... ethereal. Yeah. Ethereal. Very ethereal. Gives you a kind of surreal feel, as if your'e not quite sure what's going on but are enjoying it anyway. Some sort of familiar melody sliding in and out there, though I can't quite pin it down. Think it may be “Spanish eyes”, would you believe? Now it's fading out with a kind of swishing motion. Hey, that was really pretty nice.

Things I like about this : The ambience, the mood set, the way the instruments are used and the way there kind of is no real melody; there is, but it's fragmented and never fully developed, which actually plays to the track's strengths.

Things I don't like about this: Not really anything. Very impressed.

Rating:

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I've also been talking about doing this one too, and apparently (though I must admit I don't recall) I listened to the album already, so let's see if I can refresh my slowly deteriorating memory.

Title: “Autumn sweater”
Format: Single
Written by: Yo La Tengo
Performed by: Yo La Tengo
Genre: Indie Rock
Taken from: The Yo La Tengo album I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One
Year: 1997
Acclaim: Again, although the album is highly respected and regarded as the band's best effort, and this time the song I'm looking at was released as a single, I have no details as to how well or otherwise it did, so can only assume it's probably liked by YLT fans but otherwise mostly unknown? Again if I'm wrong, please set me straight; this is another band I know nothing about.

Once more I find this is first up in the results for YouTube, so must be well known. Heavy beating drum at the start (reflecting the album title?) then a thick organ comes in (shut up!) before the vocal starts, quite restrained and sort of low-key. The tempo is definitely mid-paced, then the bass cuts in and the song gets a little more intense, sort of conga percussion too. Takes on a sort of marching, almost militaristic feel in the drumming but the vocal remains more or less the same all the way through. Interesting that there seems to be little or no guitar; this is almost totally driven on the keyboard.

Things I like about this : Again, pretty much everything. I liked the vocal, I loved the organ and the way the percussion changed was cool. The laidback feel of it was really nice.

Things I don't like about this: Again, nothing I can point to.

Rating:

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Time to do something totally different now, and head all the way back to the end of the 1960s, to the summer of love. Maybe.


Title: "The Autumn stone"
Format: Track
Written by: Steve Marriott
Performed by: The Small Faces
Genre: Rock/R&B
Taken from: The Small Faces retrospective album of the same name
Year: 1969
Acclaim: For this particular song? None I think, as it was apparently an unreleased song from the sessions for one of their other albums. This retrospective was released after the breakup of the band, so I don't see any great acclaim accruing to this track at least. Nor was it released as a single.

Nice soft acoustic guitar opening, sounds a little folky to me with a kind of echoey vocal. Love the flute solo, so sixties! Really gentle the way it slips along, then out of nowhere we get a harmonica and a jews harp, and it starts to up the tempo a little just before it ends. Bit odd.

Things I like about this : The vocal, the guitar, the soft relaxed way it slides along. The flute.

Things I don't like about this: The kind of jarring change just at the end when it goes for me a litlte off-track and I feel ends badly.

Rating:

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Gonna cheat a little here! Both these albums fit the criteria I set out here, but both have been already reviewed by me in my main journal. Was a long time ago, so I think I'm justified in reprinting them here. If not, tough: it's my journal...



Title: Forever Autumn (Yes I know I've already had a song by that name. Your point?)
Format: Album
Written by: Daniel Brennare
Performed by: Lake of Tears
Genre: Gothic Metal
Year: 1999
Acclaim: Unsure; don't think it's terribly well known outside of their fanbase.

Lake of Tears are, apparently, something of an enigma. Beginning in the early 90s as a black/doom metal band, this four-piece from Sweden scored critical success with their second album, 1995's Headstone, which was an all-out doom/gothic metal album, but then for their third recording, 1997's A Crimson Cosmos, they evolved progressive metal and psychedelic styles into their music, weaving in fantasy and mythological imagery to their songs. Much more melodic than doom metal, this was followed two years later by their fourth offering, which seemed to eschew the original influences entirely and is a far more laid-back, introspective album with hardly a whisper of black metal anywhere.

This is immediately apparent from the opening track, “So fell autumn rain”, with its mournful cello intro, picked up by piano and then crashing guitars, but keeping very melodic as the keyboards slide in, the vocal initially very low in the mix, almost an afterthought but still clearly audible and discernible. For the verses, vocalist Daniel Brennare kicks it up slightly so that you can hear him better, but it's the music that really carries the track: it could almost work as an instrumental. The intensely melancholic nature of the album is due to the fact that it's dedicated to the memory of Juha Saarinen, whom I have to assume is some relation to keyboard player Christian, though I can't confirm who he/she was.

“Hold on tight” opens on acoustic guitar, then the electric screams in and the song picks up, still mid-paced, almost a cruncher, but in the mould of a very heavy ballad with growling then crying guitars from Magnus Sahlgren, slipping back into the acoustic variety for the low-key ending. The title track then is another with an acoustic opening --- there's very little evidence of Lake of Tears' previous life as a doom metal band here --- and another ballad, with some very nice keys and introspective guitar. Brennare's vocals are clear and clean on this track, and you no longer have to strain to hear him. More beautiful cello here really adds an extra layer to the song, thanks to Henriette Schack.

The first real time the guys rock out on this album then is when “Pagan wish” hits, a mid-paced heavy rocker, with solid guitar from Sahlgren and swirly organ from Saarinen, then “Otherwheres” is a beautifully piano-constructed instrumental with slowly fading in acoustic guitar, with some nice sound effects --- rain, thunder, children laughing in the distance --- and some truly lovely and dramatic strings with choral vocals, to take us into “The Homecoming”, where Bo Hulpheres' flute makes its entrance and the song is another slow-paced rocker, nice keys in the background, almost unnoticed and an impassioned vocal from Brennare, measured drumbeats from Johan Oudhuis keeping the pace perfectly.

Another mid-pacer is “Come night I reign”, which you would probably expect to be a thrash rocker, but it's not: in fact, just about nothing on this album is headbanging material. It's mostly slow or mid-paced, often acoustic or partially acoustic, and indeed the best description of the music on this album would have to be “introspective”, as it certainly makes you think about things, like your own mortality. Lots of lyrics about death, sorrow, loss and loneliness. Christian Saarinen's keyboards almost seem to be crying on this track.

The enigmatically titled “Demon you/Lily Anne” again starts with deep, mournful cello, then Brennare lets loose with perhaps his most powerful vocal performance on the album, and even the music speeds up just a little tiny bit in response, the guitars heavier, the drums a little louder, even Saarinen seems to be stabbing the keys with a little more fervour. And then we're into the closer, the longest track on the album by a considerable way, clocking in at just over eight minutes.

“To blossom blue” kicks in with nice guitar, heavy drums and accordion --- yes, you read that right: accordion! --- with lush keyboards drifting around the melody like a ghost haunting the song. But the song is really a showcase and vehicle for Magnus Sahlgren's expressive and at times almost unbearably emotional guitar work, some of his best on the album. The final word is, though, reserved for Schack's sorrowful cello, and “Forever autumn” ends as it began.

Unless you're in a very depressed mood already I wouldn't look too closely into the lyrical content, as this is not a happy album, nor is it meant to be. But neither is it a typical doom metal album. It's hard to pin this down: it has elements of prog rock and prog metal, certainly, ambient music in there, classical, straight-ahead rock and even some folk elements. One thing it is not in any way is predictable, and even if you're a fan of Lake of Tears and think you've heard everything from them, this album will most certainly change your mind about them.

If, like me, you're just getting into the band, Forever autumn is likely to come as a very pleasant surprise.

TRACKLISTING

1. So fell autumn rain
2. Hold on tight
3. Forever autumn
4. Pagan wish
5. Otherwheres
6. The Homecoming
7. Come night I reign
8. Demon you/Lily Anne
9. To blossom blue

Things I like about this : The slow, melancholic mood, the cellos, the unexpected instruments like accordion, but most of all, the surprise. This is like when I listened to Antimatter for the first time, and was totally surprised by what I heard.

Things I don't like about this: Pretty much nothing really.

Rating:

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Title: Woodland cathedral
Format: Album track
Written by: Aaron and Nathan Weaver
Performed by: Wolves in the Throne Room
Genre: Black Metal
Taken from: Celestial Lineage
Year: 2011
Acclaim: n/a

Time to go for a band with wolves in the name rather than a song, and there are a few. I remember reviewing, I think it was, Two Hunters, probably for Metal Month at some point, and being mightily impressed with it. Over the course of three years of running Metal Month, I did gain a new appreciation for some Black Metal, not all – bands like Panopticon, Gehenna and Blut Aud Nord really spoke to me, and in screechy voices I had not expected to listen to, but I did – and so I don't have the kind of trepidation about listening to it that I would have had, say, three years ago, nearly four now. As it happens, I seem to have stumbled, in my patented Trollheart close-your-eyes-and-run-across-the-road method of choosing albums, upon what seems to be regarded as one of their best, or to put it in the words of critic Brandon Stousuy, “American Black Metal's idiosyncratic defining record of 2011”. Um, yeah. I'm assuming that means he likes it. Will I? Well, who knows, but it's just the one track I'm taking, and as most of the tracks are in the double-digit mark, I've chosen one that's only six.

I know WitTR tend to veer a little towards the more pagan side, as it were, of Black Metal, which is to say, they come down a little more on the hard, melodic manner of Pagan Metal as opposed to the breakneck, cursing and roaring of some other Black Metal I could name. This one certainly has dark medieval overtones, much more than the Rainbow song, with almost a kind of slow, doomy chant in the opening, female vocals of all things. Who by? Let me just check that. Oh. Jessika Kenney, apparently, an experimental vocalist whose bag is mostly Persian and Indonesian music. Indeed. Well she does well here. I'm pretty sure I can hear a church organ going, slow, heavy, muted percussion, not too much guitar, though it does come in later.

It's the kind of song that I would, were someone to tell me, scoff and say there's no way it's Black Metal, if my understanding of this wide and varied subgenre had not changed forever over the last few years. Far from being all about screeching maniacs and guitars played rather less expertly than a novice punk band in the late seventies, it's a deep, thoughtful, dark cornucopia of various styles, vocals, ideas and lyrics, and while you can certainly lump many Black Metal bands in the one category, others just refuse to be pushed into a box. Wolves in the Throne Room are one of those. Further listening definitely required.

Things I like about this :
1. Not your “standard” Black Metal song
2. Female vocals
3. Good use of the organ
4. Great ominous percussion
5. Very slow, almost more Doom Metal at times

Things I don't like about this:
Nothing, really

Rating:

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Title: “My tangerine dream”
Format: Album track
Written by: Andrew Stockdale
Performed by: Wolfmother
Genre: Hard rock
Taken from: New Crown
Year: 2014
Acclaim: n/a

I for some reason always assumed Wolfmother were a metal band – well, they sound like it, don't they? But apparently they're not. And that's all I know about them. Reading up, I see they've been compared to the greats like Zep and Sabbath, and now I look, I see the tag Heavy Metal is present, so maybe they are. Who knows? This is, as if you couldn't guess, my first experience of this band, so let's see what they have. I've chosen the track above more or less at random, as indeed the album has been chosen arbitrarily, although the veiled reference to Chris Franke's seminal psych/prog band of the seventies did, I admit, swing my choice a little.

Well that certainly sounds very seventies, the guitar kind of fuzzy, and even the vocal is quite Ozzyesque, so I can see the comparisons to Sabbath being somewhat valid, as well as those to the sort of Robert you put in a pot and water to see him grow. Kind of laidback in its way, with the guitar screeching riffs here and there, then a nice solo before the vocal comes back in. Perhaps a little bland, but not bad. Like the guitar buildup in around the fourth minute. Oh wait, it's stopped completely and now here's an acoustic, slow guitar with phased effects (?) and a much different vocal, almost like the late great Johnny Cash. Weird. But good.

Things I like about this :
1. Guitar is good, powerful without taking over too much
2. Vocal is a little derivative but engaging
3. Acoustic guitar at the end is nice and unexpected

Things I don't like about this:

1. The Johnny Cash vocal at the end does not work for me
2. The constant stabs of riffs after each “My tangerine dream” kind of irritates me
3. The reprise is kind of pointless really.

Rating:

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Title: “Killer wolf”
Format: Album track
Written by: Glenn Danzig
Performed by: Danzig
Genre: Heavy Metal
Taken from: Danzig II: Lucifuge
Year: 1990
Acclaim: n/a

Now this is definitely Heavy Metal! I only know Danzig from, apart from the general mention of their name around the forum, my listening to their third album a good while back. Think it was for “Love or Hate?” not sure. Seems the guy has a lot of problems with organised religion, something I find ironic when you consider his guitarist decided to call himself John Christ! Anyway, enough of that. Let's see what this song, apparently a reworking of an old blues song, is like.

Well, that's very doomy, quite a Waitsesque vibe in the opening, then the guitar kicks in with what sounds to me like a very Western (as in, Western movie) feel, and of course Danzig did mention it was a blues song, so we get, well, a blues song. Not sure who wrote it originally, or how much it's been altered by our man Glenn, but he's credited with all the writing on this album, this included, so I guess he must have changed it a good bit. Doesn't sound like it though if I'm honest: I could hear some old Delta Blues singer howling this. Speaking of which ... but that's for later.

Basically a metal blues tune (steel blues?) about a guy who goes after every woman in town, very much the stuff of your thirties and forties blues song, with a nice metal guitar solo there in the middle. Certainly gives this wolf teeth!

Things I like about this :
1. It's the blues, Jim, but not as we know it!
2. That solo
3. Very drowned-in-whiskey style vocal

Things I don't like about this:
Can't think of anything really. Might go for
1. If he rewrote the tune, should he not give credit to whoever originally did? Though I don't know that of course.


Rating:

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Title: “Brother wolf, sister moon”
Format: Album track
Written by: Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy
Performed by: The Cult
Genre: Gothic rock
Taken from: Love
Year: 1985
Acclaim: n/a

The Cult for me evoke memories of a sort of “other Cure” performing live on Top of the Pops, though what song it was I don't remember. I always got a kind of, how can I say this, weird vibe from them but have never listened to, nor indeed wanted to listen to any of their music. On the face of it, this song sounds like something you'd hear on one of those compilations of Native American music, or some New Age thing. I doubt it will be either.

Melancholy doom style guitar to open with (I bet the singer is dark and dangerous-sounding, well not quite). A little manic perhaps in a restrained way, very slow pounding percussion, the song gives the impression of perhaps building up to something? Guitar puts me in mind of Big Country to a degree. Okay, the percussion got a little more forceful and just a shade faster now, but it's still basically the same – what would I call it? A lament? Yeah, a lament. Kind of enjoying it I must admit. Good solo, powerful but restrained; I like that the guy didn't just wank all over the song, which is something it definitely does not need, and yet he stamps his identity on it effortlessly. All in all, quite impressive. Oh, great ending! Love the rumbling thunder receding into the distance.

Things I like about this :
1. The atmosphere evoked; quite dark and tribal in its way
2. The guitar riffs, sparse but effective
3. The vocal; kind of reaches out and grabs you by the throat
4. The thunder at the end

Things I don't like about this:
Nothing really


Rating:

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Title: “The boy who cried wolf”
Format: Single
Written by: Paul Weller
Performed by: The Style Council
Genre: Pop/Soul
Taken from: Our Favourite Shop
Year: 1985
Acclaim: n/a

Another band I really hated was these guys. Weird in a way: I hated the Jam (not so much now of course but back when I was young) and then despised the way Paul Weller had the effrontery to break them up and then put together a new band. Who's ever done that before? But even I had to admit that songs like “You're the best thing” and “Walls come tumbling down” were catchy slices of eighties pop, but they were hit singles and this was not, so I was exposed, if you will, to the Style Council kind of against my will, whereas this time I'm heading into their inner sanctum. As it were. Although released as a single, it appears to have flopped, which might be why it never came to my attention. Or not.

Reminds me a bit of a-ha with a slice of forties French lounge or something, maybe a bit of Sade, quite a little soul in there. If there's orchestration it's really nice. There is orchestration. It is nice. Some female vocals too, from who? Either Tracy Young or Alison Limerick, apparently. It's quite a nice little tune really, inoffensive but with a certain bite. Not bad at all.

Things I like about this :
1. The rhythm and tempo
2. The orchestration
3. The female vocals

Things I don't like about this:
Oddly, nothing really


Rating:

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