Followers of Michael Gira's storied career might have anticipated his latest work with The Angels of Light as a natural reduction of his emotional approach to songwriting to its most basic form.
Gone are the instrumental passages and long, orchestrated songs that build and explode and then fade only to build again and pummel the listener. Gone (or at least greatly reduced) are the images of death and blood and fire and the stark, unflinching colors with which Gira has chosen to paint over the years. Instead, this record, which may sound from the title like it should be an album full of cover tunes, is a quiet, acoustic homage to "other people" as disparate as Michael Jackson, Saddam Huessein, and Gira's band mates. The sonic reductionism gives The Angels of Light a chance to strip down to bare banjos and guitars, strings, and a chorus of voices courtesy of the Akron/Family, and lets the words stand at the center of a dark stage under an uncomfortable spotlight. Of course the danger with Gira stripping away the layers of instrumentation and accompaniment is that we are pushed ever closer to the man himself, and towards his dark, creaky voice and all of the terrors it feels compelled to spill. After years of seeing Gira live, listening to his records and reading his books, I'm not sure I want to be this close and that's what makes the record so hard to take. Though this is a very different Angels of Light record, Gira's dark lyrical wit and emotional directness are as in tact as ever. He shifts in and out of different characters, but his voice remains clear and focused with little variation other than extremes of spooky-quiet and spookier-loud. In this new and more intimate setting backed by out-of-tune pianos and folksy vocal chants, Gira's limited vocal range actually becomes a distraction, causing the songs to blend together in a creepy half-sung, half-spoken haze. He channels his best Lou Reed during "The Kid is Already Breaking," and erupts into a rage (well, as raging as the Angels of Light ever get) on "Michael's White Hands," and by the third or fourth time through, the record leaves me feeling claustrophobic and anxious. After a while, it becomes impossible to tell when he's paying homage and when he's vilifying, though perhaps that ambiguity is the result of reading too much into these songs that are as simplified as can be. At this point in his career, Michael Gira is no longer building a fan-base or making friends with his music, and with this album it's clear that he's not simply handing out easy retreads to those who have followed him through the years. Fortunately for him, he's still doing creative work in distilling the essence of his sound and life into a kind of concentrated musical bullion. Unfortunately for me, the result is a little overwhelming making the record one for which I have little taste.
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