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November 13, 2005
winding up along the plates of bark
Despistado - This Neighbourhood
As you might know if you've been reading Molars for a while, I've got kind of a thing for Despistado. Maybe it just takes me a long time to work through the stages of grief (viz. what I've written about the Impossibles and, most of all, Black Eyes) after a band has broken up. Regardless of that, Despistado's "The People Of and Their Verses" will absolutely end up as one of my top albums of this year. It's kind of a shame that the band's debut was released only as a set of files, and not as an actual physical product, because I think that has definitely made "The People Of..." seem more like just a concession to the band, or an experiment/novelty, instead of a legitimately wonderful first (and final) set of songs from an enormously inventive and talented band.
I think a lot of what makes this band so appealing (to me at least) is the way their songs move. There's a lot of back-and-forth between delicate, filigreed guitar lines and solid, thick sections of chords strummed wildly and relentlessly, and the rhythm section is especially adroit at being able to turn on a dime, from holding pattern to noisy climax, etc. Besides that, Dagan Harding, the lead singer, not only has a wonderful voice, but also packs his lyrics full of inscrutable, sort of phonologically pretty turns of phrase- take this slection from 'Magnetic Streetlights': "She said aesthetically reflects on your body/haven't you seen the world/we do we do/nuclear/nuclear/the service industry congregation meet again/after hours/on the towers/crisis/crisis". His voice is strong and bold, but doesn't take on the kind of screamy edge (not that screaming is a bad thing) that you sometimes get with this kind of super-energetic band.
If I can offer up one ridiculous simile for Despistado, it's that their music is like riding one of those open-topped water slides at an amusement park: there's the mildly comforting sensation of floating in a stream of water, but there's also the inescapable fear of possibly banking up too high on one of the turns, and plummeting 300 feet to die an embarrassing, swimsuited death. So. What I mean is that this is both comfort music and high-adrenaline music. It's less fight and more flight, you know? Just go buy the album- it's only $10.
Posted by Kevin at November 13, 2005 12:54 AM