Sometimes you hear an album and you just know that said album is going to be one of your go to albums for the remainder of your life on this planet, admittedly this is a rare occurrence but when it does happen, as with Elder's "Lore", Kyuss' "Welcome To Sky Valley" and Black Sabbath's "Master of Reality", well it feels like an almost religious experience. It was this feeling we, at Desert Psychlist, experienced when pushing play on Pittsburgh combo Spotlights latest opus "Alchemy For The Dead" (Ipecac Recordings) a release that tears up the rock rule book by incorporating into its grooves elements of alt-rock, doom-gaze, synth-wave, prog and aspects of metal and stoner rock to create a sound that is devoid of boundaries and owes as much to The Cure, Portishead and Porcupine Tree as it does to those purveyors of heaviness we mentioned earlier.
Death, how we deal with it and its effect on everything we are connected with, is the main theme explored by
Spotlights on "
Alchemy For The Dead", but don't go expecting a journey down a rabbit hole of dark despair and depression because that is just not the case, yes the subject matter is weighty and the music can get dark and intense but there is also a beautiful dreaminess to be found here also. The band,
Sarah Quintero (bass/guitar/vocals);
Mario Quintero (guitar/synths/vocals) and
Chris Enriquez (drums), may infuse their music with moments of heavy
sludge-like ugliness but those moments are, more often than not, countered by episodes of shimmering ambience and synthesised lysergic liquidity and combine with the mostly hazy clean and melodic mix of lead and harmonised vocals to create a dynamic that although not exactly undulating is nonetheless multi-dimensional. The song writing throughout this superbly put together opus is nothing short of mind-blowing, the lyrical structures and musical arrangements, on songs like "
Beyond The Broken Sky", "
Sunset Burial", "
False Gods" (featuring
Ben Ople on tenor sax), "
Ballad In The Mirror", and the blustering and beautiful title track "
Alchemy For The Dead", are nothing short of masterful and see swirling synths, shimmering percussion and gently picked acoustics routinely trading places with reverberating power chords, low growling bass motifs and heavy rhythmic drum patterns in a mix of styles and dynamics you would be hard pushed to find any other band being able to replicate.
Heavy music can often find itself travelling down the same old paths it has always travelled down, relying on the same old riffs and the same old lyrical cliches that we all still love and admire but do not really break new ground. Spotlights, with "Alchemy For The Dead" are bucking that trend, the songs that populate this album challenge the listener to explore outside of the musical boxes that have become their comfort blankets and change their perception of what equates to heavy.
Check it out ....
No comments:
Post a Comment