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May 04, 2005
Air was what birds flew through
Despistado - Broken
As I mentioned a little while back, Despistado broke up some time in December, but not before recording their debut full-length, "The People Of and Their Verses". This is what Joel Passmore (the band's bass player) had to say about the break-up, on the band's message board: "Dagan [lead singer and guitarist] quit the band. felt he wanted to move on in life. you may want to ask him for all the details. although dagan was willing to finish out the tour bren [drummer] wanted to go home." Passmore has apparently been concentrating his energies on his other band, Sylvie, and working with Despistado's Leif Thorseth (guitarist) on getting another project up and running, which is promising news, since Despistado were just so goddamn good.
'Broken' has all the traits of a standard Despistado burner: warm, frantic energy, the intriguing/baffling lyrics, and a certain rhythmic intensity. Everything that anyone could have come to expect from the amazing "Emergency Response" EP. But it's leaner, in a way, and more focused. At the start, there's a discreet, whispering guitar just sort of mindlessly stuck on a phrase- contrast that with the less polite, more confident guitar that emerges (with chunky chords) right before Dagan's ranting in the first verse (his voice is like Robert Smith's- especially the way it sounds like any and all anguish in his life and attendant disappointments live right in the back of his throat, like his words are filtered through something thick and intractable). After the first chorus, there's a beautiful little guitar noise that floats down every few seconds- it sounds like a wet glass rubbed by a finger. Dagan sings the chorus with unimpeachable passion, "This city is energy on the verge of collapse/and we're not feeling/like angels/despite the way that we look/we're all broken", and there's nothing that could convince me that this band wouldn't have been huge, had they stayed together (just listen to the ending of this song if you need proof).
Unfortunately, "The People Of and Their Verses" was not released as a physical album- since the band had broken up and weren't about to do any touring, Jade Tree decided to put it out digitally. Although I'm glad the record wasn't tied up in legal wrangling or anything, I can't help but think that the digital release will consign "The People Of..." to the status of 'cautionary tale', or at best it'll end up a curiosity. Hopefully it'll get some more attention soon. Anyway, if you're interested, you can buy the album online from Jade Tree.
P.S. I'm off to D.C. for a board meeting, so there won't be anything on Friday (maybe something over the weekend). Riding the train. Should be, um, fun(?).
Posted by Kevin at May 4, 2005 10:14 PM
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