San Francisco's Barn Owl have always been underground music chameleons, shifting skillfully between ominous drone, distorted amplifier worship, and all the various places in between, but their first album for Thrill Jockey extends that schizophrenia a bit too far for my taste. Fortunately, while Ancestral Star may not be a completely coherent whole, it at least sounds quite good while it is missing the mark.
Ancestral Star begins with Evan Caminiti and Jon Porras making an oddly melodic foray into doom metal with "Sundown," patiently allowing the sludgy power chords and ringing arpeggios plenty of time to decay and feed back.Unfortunately, "Sundown" is still more notable for being a microcosm of everything that is exasperating about much of this album: a cool motif is presented and explored, but it ends too quickly to amount to much and too bluntly alludes to another artist's work (it is impossible to find a review of this album without a mention of Earth).Ancestral Star sounds like the work of several different pretty good bands, but only a few of them are allowed to stretch out and accomplish something memorable.Two- and three-minute running times are a great idea for catchy, structured songs with strong melodies, but drone-based music takes time to suck the listener in.Barn Owl, more often than not, fail to allow their songs proper time to unfold here.Obviously, their previous albums had some short songs too, but they felt more like thematically linked song suites–Ancestral Star feels much more compartmentalized.Also, I want Barn Owl to sound more uniquely like Barn Owl.
If I didn’t know anything about this duo's previous work, I would probably not be as harsh on them.However, I like From Our Mouths a Perpetual Light quite a bit (Conjurer, too, albeit to a lesser extent) and had rather high expectations for this album which were not met.Of course, there's still certainly a lot to like.For one, Ancestral Star definitely sounds much clearer and more immediate than any of the band's other albums, as one of the perks to signing with Thrill Jockey was getting to record in a professional studio.Also, Barn Owl seems to benefit greatly from the presence of guest musicians like Marielle Jakobsons (Darwinsbitch), The Norman Conquest, and the duo's bandmates from their Portraits side-project.Having other people involved definitely seems to draw out Evan and Jon's best work, particularly Portraits' contribution of bells, singing bowls, and non-traditional percussion to the spooky, ritualistic drone of "Incantation."Unfortunately, "Incantation" only lasts 1:58, which makes me want to scream and shake somebody by their shoulders.
Barn Owl can be an excellent band when they force themselves to hold a mood and allow ideas to fully unfold and progress, such as with the roiling distorted drone of the ten-minute title piece–more of that would've been wonderful.Unfortunately, Cominiti and Porras seem to be intent on expanding their palette rather than getting deeper and more focused.I suspect that practically anyone can find something to like about Ancestral Star, but that few will find it very satisfying.
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