Cocteau Twins founder and indie guitar demi-god Robin Guthrie has always been both reliable and respectable (musically, anyway), but seldom surprising. The pleasant and elegant dreampop instrumentals of Angel Falls do not waver from this trend. However, they don't indicate any declining quality in his singular soundscape wizardry either.
The most glib and simplistic (yet extremely accurate) way to describe Angel Falls is “this sounds exactly like some of the better Cocteau Twins songs, but with Liz Fraser’s vocals replaced with guitars.” Of course, I was never a particularly huge Fraser fan, so that is perfectly fine with me. However, the absence of a vocalist does have some negative consequences: pop instrumentals are kind of a hard sell. I suppose perhaps a vocalist humanizes music and creates a stronger connection with the listener, or maybe the presence of lyrics just adds more information and variation to the melody (which makes multiple listens more rewarding), or maybe there is some intangible third possibility that has not even occurred to me yet. I suspect it is a riddle that I will never truly solve. Regardless, I hope this EP finds a suitably receptive audience somehow, as this is some great summer music. It would also be great music to soundtrack a shoegazer barbeque, an alternative prom, a montage of bittersweet romantic memories, or an epic heroin binge. To his credit, Guthrie has presciently and decisively filled those niches before most of the world was even aware that they existed.
Angel Falls consists of four short songs, all of which are quite enjoyable and adhere very closely to the sound that Guthrie is known for: layers of chiming arpeggios and hazy heavily chorused chords, melodic bass lines, and an atmosphere of blissful melancholy. “Camera Lucida” kicks off the EP with all of these elements in maximum abundance and gradually builds from a gentle ringing melody into something that approaches a rock song, while the following track (“Love Never Dies a Natural Death”) is a sleepy gem of slow-motion, quavering beauty. The somewhat darker closing track (“Delicate”) is probably the best piece on the album, as it shimmers, glistens, quivers, and chimes with an elegant, spidery beauty and spacey bliss that one can only get from the guitar of Robin Guthrie. The whole thing is over in less than twenty minutes, which makes this EP a very effective teaser for Guthrie's upcoming new album: rather than overstaying its welcome, Angel Falls left me wishing it hadn't ended so soon.
While I certainly enjoyed Angel Falls quite a bit, it is nevertheless a clear example of why Guthrie has always been a bit of a puzzle to me: it has been over twenty-five years since the Cocteau Twins' debut album was released and there has been very little deviation from that original formula since. It seems strange to me that someone who heavily influenced My Bloody Valentine and played such an integral role in defining the whole shoegazer genre would be so reluctant to expand his very narrow sonic palette. I wonder if Guthrie is in a creative rut or if he just a victim of his own prolific output: it is hard to imagine Kevin Shields being as revered as he is if Loveless had been followed by half a dozen more albums in roughly the same vein. Then again, perhaps Guthrie just has a very specific vision of how he wants to sound and has spent his entire adult life trying to perfect it. Or maybe his more adventurous impulses are vented in his filmmaking and soundtrack work. Or maybe he has been saving up all of his wild and brilliant ideas for next Violet Indiana album (if it ever comes out). Yet another possibility is that I need to stop overanalyzing his creative arc and just be happy that he is sitting in France quietly amassing a large body of great songs- it’s hard to say. Regardless, a new release from Guthrie is always welcome and 2009 is packed full of them: he has a new full-length (Carousel) dropping in August and another EP (Songs to Help My Children Sleep) slated for October.
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