Not unlike 2002's Amore del Tropico, the focus on The Spell is on love. Devastation, remorse, seduction, memories, and a whole host of emotions ranging from despair to anger occupy every thought and every syllable of every song. Whittled down to a five piece, now including The Album Leaf's Jimmy LaValle, the band sounds forceful. The entire album buzzes with a apprehensive energy, summoning the spirit of Alfred Hitchcock with equal parts lone poet and repenting sinner.
Touch & Go
I knew this was about love from the moment I saw the cover; a tattooed palm carrying the universal symbol of passion is front and center, emanating an energy made tense by the presence of a crow also featured in the drawing. The booklet reveals a clone army of nude women, a hypnotic spell pulsing from their bodies. The first song, "Tangled," gravitates between romantic sentiment and a sense of ominous control: "Trapped in your web I'll always be / Wrapped around my heart like thorns you sting / Tangled in my heart you will stay." Paul Jenkin's sense of poetic creativity isn't on par with Leonard Cohen's, but its bare honesty and Jenkin's delivery suits the music almost perfectly. Everything from the artwork to the distinctly American, distinctly gothic music the band belts out revolves around a theme of helplessness and confused intentions. The band backs these themes up in spirit, morphing from impressionistic dirges into dark country western ballads featuring beautiful lap steel and string performances. This album is for love, against love, and inextricably bound up in all its conceits; it is a perfectly sequenced and conceived album with absolutely zero loose strings.
Just another love album would be dull, though, if it weren't for the layers of ideas and music that The Black Heart Procession has woven into this record. Jenkins draws straight lines from desperate love to worldly loss and dizziness. Love mired in a foggy world is far more desperate and impossible than love examined on its own and the band draws exclamation points around this fact. "The Fix" snakes a lusty course around the impossibility of change. Jenkins sings, "We can't change the course / We can't get the fix / We can't win the world," feeling the disparate lives everyone pursues growing further apart and less compassionate. Tobias Nathaniel plays organ and guitar over a gypsy-like violin part, emphasizing the busy world that grinds forward around everyone else, around the quiet prayers and hopes that people slowly abandon forever. It is remarkable to hear a band this in tune with the subject matter on a record. It's as if every member has a secret chart by which to translate every feeling into the appropriate chords and rhythms. The violin on a song like "The Letter" is astonishing, matching the intensity of the lyrics with an effortless cry. The instrument sounds alive all over this record and it's a fucking miracle to hear it played that way. Songs peak and sky rocket just when they should, escalating into mountains of sound at times and diving into deep, abysmal sadness seamlessly, without the first sign of sweat. The musicianship of each member is only matched by the mood they evoke through their talents. The sadness on "To Bring You Back" is almost choking, placing the world of lovers distinctly in the realm of the night, where tender emotions have to be hidden if they want to survive the universe at daylight.
I'm more of a fan of abstract music than anything, always taken by surprise when such unusual sounds can effect me personally. There are a few bands around, however, that take pop, rock, and other variations thereof and wind them up into something special and heart felt. The Black Heart Procession has taken forms of music everyone will be familiar with and turned them into an exciting, new, and powerful sound.
This is one of the best records I've heard this year and it'll be damn hard to top. Whoever does it will have to figure out how this band merged all their ideas together so well and addressed a topic so tired without sounding silly. In fact, The Black Heart Procession comes away sounding just the opposite, they've reinvented the topic of love and utilized with cutting precision. Oh, and on a side note, "Not Just Words" gets my vote for being the catchiest, most subtly depressing song in recent memory. I can't stop singing its chorus and at the same time it puts a pit in my stomach that makes me wish I could.
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