First thing’s first, I love this album. Everything left on the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling. More importantly on the recordings, which burst with an feeling of heart breaking melancholy. A payment for the beauty in the music. Saint Louie is not fucking about.
I keep your switchblade
hung around my neck
with a thin piece of yarn
Saint Louie’s vocal tone and delivery is simply wonderful. It lilts and mumbles as if you are the only person listening. You lean in to get a better understanding and it just crushes you. Well it does me anyway. The arrangements pack a real punch but they are also delicate, fragile, broken in parts. The glitches, the saturation to the point of distortion. The disregard for convention. The similarity to Sparklehorse is what caught me at first but then it opened up to be it’s own thing.
Give me a minute
or two to
screw on my head
I don’t want to say something I regret
The songs come in and out of nowhere, stories, recollections and memories all communicated on a bed of beautifully understated acoustic guitar slashed by vicious, waspy guitars and thick basslines. I love the instrumentation but man that voice gives me the chills.
Walking circles around my bedroom
The walls spin around me too
Voices smother my head, they puncture me
No one will come to save me
I talk a lot about choices and honesty, well here they are in fine effect. I love all of this album, favorite track is Shoes and I’ll be honest, it broke me the first time, the second time it did it again.
But it’s different now
So different now
You broke me beyond belief
Shooting sentimental daggers
with manufactured grief
– Shoes
Please, if you have time, check this album out.
For fans poof Pixies, Sparklehorse and Okkervil River.
The Nirvana Fallacy (or, Mania and Her Sophomore Slump)” is a deceptive album. At first glance, it’s a mellow, at times even soft sounding alternative rock piece. However, it keeps hitting the listener with glitchy noises that increase in frequency and intensity, the further along the album progresses.
This stands in stark contrast to the beautiful melodies and the soft and clear singing, accompanied mostly by acoustic and electric guitar. At times, the production changes from a simple “guy with a guitar” sound into something larger, more highly produced sounding, even further enhancing the sense of contrast. This is clearly the work of an artist, that put a lot of thought into the effect their music is supposed to have on their audience.
The lyrics speak of feelings of insecurity, inadequacy and trauma. Themes of bad relationships, bad parenting, a constant loneliness and pain, paint a picture of a person that tries come to terms with the problems other people have burdened them with. The feeling I was left with after I finished listening, was one of brooding melancholia. In the end, nothing got resolved, only the sensation of betrayal and hurt remained. For my money, that’s the result of incredibly dense and capable storytelling.
Overall, this is an album that I highly recommend, both for it’s display of skilled musicianship and for it’s fantastic sense of atmosphere.
– Florgoth
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