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On this double CD, their third release, Jesse Poe's Tanakh have abandoned songwriting and shifted their attention to creating dark atmospheric soundscapes. Seven musicians contribute to the project, including Pat Best, who must have felt right at home here, as the shifting drones sometimes recall his work with Pelt. The music sounds very much a product of the cavernous temple in which it was recorded.Alien8 Recordings
While listening I felt as if I had entered that space. The booklet's photographs of instruments and other constructions scattered about the dimly lit space enhance the perception of the recording. Although split onto two CDs, one 59 minute track and one 28 minute track, the music is best perceived as one piece. There is enough textural variety to make Tanakh a thoroughly enjoyable listening experience for the 90 minute duration. While it is not easy to deduce the exact instrumentation used, piano, hand percussion, guitar, distant moaning voices, and various low-end drones can be heard rising and subsiding during the piece. It seems that rather than focusing on individual instruments, the group was concerned with conveying a bigger picture that gives a sense of the space of the building itself. The resonances created by these instruments in various combinations, and at various volumes, recall both Organum and the Deep Listening projects of Pauline Oliveros. There are many levels of activity, making this a recording that will reveal different layers of sound with repeated listens. There is a haphazard, yet unified quality to the way the musicians interact with one another. A noisy, low-end rumbling sound is offset by the sound of piano strings being slowly plucked. Light percussion suggests a rhythmic element but does not set a tempo. The music feels both chaotic and calming at the same time. This sense of dynamics is what saves the album from becoming simply "ambient". It is difficult to record one piece that remains engaging for 90 minutes straight, but Poe has chosen musicians who fit the purpose well. The album benefits from having not been recorded in a studio, the immediacy of the sound being crucial to its' success. The abrupt stop at the end of CD2 implies that the tape ran out during what was possibly a much longer session. It also lends a timeless quality to the recording. There is a sense that Poe wanted the recording to be a document of what happened when a group of people gathered in a particular place at a particular time. This is a bold statement to make for someone who possesses talent as a traditional songwriter.
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Someone in this band has been to hell and back; the vocalist emulates enough emotions to make a manic depressive feel good about the way life is going. Depravity, arson, prostitution, obsession, betrayal, manipulation, and alcoholism are just a few of the topics the lyricist conjures up in the first half of the album. The music is a fitting combination of manipulated beats, chamber music, sickly lounge deliveries, and darkly lit soundscapes fluctuating between old phonograph recordings from the 1920's and blazingly confrontational arrangements that could've only been born out of the heart of a psychopath.Ipecac
If the drama of the album is to be believed, the entire recording is for the father of the female vocalist. More than a few songs mention a father figure directly and one track is titled "Daddy." Whether houses are being mysteriously burnt down or someone is getting wrapped up in a love affair that is decidedly one-sided, there's little to be happy about on any of these songs. But the music is so damned intriguing and varied that even "Whiskey Bound," a song about a father leaving (the vocalist's?), feels absolutely spell-binding. After a slight lull right at the beginning of the album (parts of "Daddy" and "$2.18" sound forced), the album stays thoroughly consistent. At times there are violins and horns moaning away underneath the gaps, whispers, shouts, and moans of the singer and at other times heavily distorted guitars and slimy drums scatter about randomly. The first part of the album resolves itself into a twangy piece of melancholy that aborts itself and comes away sounding as like a soul, gospel, and funk song all wrapped into one. On the other hand, "Will" is a piece that recalls vocal jazz arrangements and all the glory of hip-hop beats pieced together to form the perfect, underlying groove. The music is sometimes desperate and forlorn and at other times it is absolutely cocky and incensing. There's no denying that some songs are outright sexy, but at the same time there are points on this record where everything sounds sleazy. That's part of the appeal; these musicians aren't afraid to get things a little dirty. Vincent & Mr. Green also happen to be provocative and smart enough to keep things varied. A lot of these songs are really pop tunes in disguise, but their arrangements and use of texture keep the album seductive, mysterious, and addicting from beginning to end. The end, in particular, is a superb one. "When We Were We" and "Dance (Part II)" both stand out as two of the best songs on the album. 
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Produced by Soft Cell's Dave Ball (and engineered by Flood), there is a distinctly pop veneer on many of the album's tracks, which stands in stark contrast to the demented, abrasive experimentalism of past albums. Layers of synthesized strings and crisp, multi-tracked production takes the place of jagged, wailing guitars and jackhammer drums. The Moon also found Gavin Friday edging ever closer to the sound he was to adopt for his solo material; emotive ballads and darkly romantic torch songs rather than the anarchic, confrontational material familiar to the band. For all of these reasons, this album will likely seem a strange departure for those more familiar with the Prunes of ...If I Die, I Die. However, fans of Friday's solo outings, Dave Ball's In Strict Tempo or Marc Almond's solo material will find much to like in the album's skewed pop sensibility. Like Almond, Friday and the Prunes freely borrow from the French chanson singer tradition, or Kurt Weill-ish 1930's Berlin cabaret. The synthesized strings also add a dose of Hollywood soundtrack style to many of the tracks, best exemplified by the Bernard Herrmann Psycho string stabs on "Our Love Will Last Forever Until the Day It Dies." As a lyricist, Friday is in fine form, transforming the disturbing imagery of "Sons Find Devils" ("Blood of baby must be spilt/To make up for our Daddy's guilt") into a rousing Irish sea shanty. The haunting melancholy of "Alone" is arranged to sound like an Ennio Morricone spaghetti Western soundtrack, an odd choice, to be sure. My favorite track by far is the utterly divergent "Just A Lovesong," with Gavin singing over a minimal arrangement of improvised piano and randomly strummed guitar. The song seems entirely improvised; an impromptu outpouring that entirely eschews melodic sense in favor of a direct, childlike emotional appeal. J.G. "Foetus" Thirlwell pops up on the title track, contributing snarling guest vocals to another classically theatrical Prunes composition. Though the mainstream pop aspirations of The Moon will doubtlessly turn off many listeners, it fits in very nicely as a bridge between earlier Virgin Prunes and the later solo work of Gavin Friday.
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