Ben Chasny, the sole creative force behind the scorched-earth folk music of Six Organs of Admittance, and Elisa Ambrogio, the snarling frontwoman of Magik Markers, have come together to form 200 Years. Their debut record is ten songs of hushed, pretty, and occasionally lackluster voice and acoustic guitar.
Chasny and Ambrogio's first collaborative project was Basalt Fingers, a trio that also included Brian Sullivan of anti-rockers Mouthus. Their lone album, 2007's Basalt Fingers, skewed closest to the raw aesthetic of Sullivan's band, stirring up a vicious amount of slow-building, abstract noise on its two, side-long pieces. The same year, Ambrogio contributed vocals to three tracks on Six Organs' majestic Shelter from the Ash. In 2008, Chasny co-produced, and contributed to, Magik Markers' Gucci Rapidshare Download, a cut-and-paste album built out of recontextualized pieces of Markers CD-R material and live recordings. While I acknowledge the versatility of these projects, there was nothing much to suggest that Chasny and Ambrogio, who have also toured together a few times, would record an album of back-porch, singer-songwriter tunes a few years down the road.
Still, when I spoke with Chasny back in February last year, he insisted 200 Years was his and Ambrogio's most subtle work to date: "200 Years is really quiet. It's the quietest thing I've ever done, and pretty sure it's the quietest thing Elisa's ever done, too [...] super structured, super quiet. Most of it's just her singing with acoustic guitar, really structured acoustic guitar." To his credit, Chasny was on point: this is a stripped-down, intimately recorded album where Ambrogio sings, Chasny plays acoustic guitar, and—well, honestly, that's about it. The production hides nothing, with Ambrogio sounding like she's singing from arm's length away with a Sunday morning hangover, no reverb or studio trickery within earshot. Meanwhile, Chasny's fingers squeak across his guitar strings imperfectly, like on Six Organs' lower-key recordings.
This sort of two-dimensional aesthetic is occasionally a weakness: Chasny limiting himself to all-acoustic doesn't necessarily mean he needs to set aside the psychedelic and Middle Eastern influences in his guitar playing (see 2011's excellent Asleep on the Floodplain), but on 200 Years, he does just that. His playing is gentle, often soothing, but also at its least distinctive in recent memory. There are a few subtle touches in post-production, like the wobbly guitar squeal that opens "City Streets" and sneaks into the mix between Ambrogio's verses. More notably, "Thread" adds a subtle, warm background hum of guitar feedback and occasional soft drum rolls to the album's lone abstract piece. Two thirds into the album, it's a relief to hear Chasny and Ambrogio set aside the monochromatic, singer-songwriter structure of the album for a moody, extended drone piece that nonchalantly buries Ambrogio's lyrics—not a strong selling point for 200 Years, by the way.
As for those songs following the verse-chorus blueprint, the best of the bunch is "West Hartford," which pairs the album's most memorable chorus melody with Chasny's background vocals complimenting Ambrogio's singing. It's a potent combination, warm and sunny, that makes me wish Chasny would sing more frequently on 200 Years, if only to accent Ambrogio's tuneful, but otherwise indistinctive, vocals. And while "West Hartford" is pleasant enough while it's playing, it never comes close to the transcendence of, say, Six Organs of Admittance's "Strangled Road" (from 2007's Shelter from the Ash), which stands as Ambrogio and Chasny's best duet to date. If 200 Years is a 18-18 collaborative effort, then perhaps it's time for Chasny and Ambrogio to buckle into their respective driver's seats in Six Organs and Magik Markers, where the magic truly happens.
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