Earth Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I
Southern Lord
Ever since they returned from their nine year hiatus with Hex; Or Printing in the Infernal Method in 2005, Earth’s patented drone doom has shown significant trending toward a dark, apocalyptic, Americana sound; they’ve long since replaced the fuzz and feedback of earlier albums with clean, mournful rhythms of a dusty and desolate gothic Western landscape. Their latest, Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I, follows the conceptual blueprint laid out by Hex, Hibernaculum, and The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull, laying its soul bare, like an old man at the end of his days embracing death beautifully and without any fanfare. It pours (slowly, of course, like molasses) an hour’s worth of rich, hypnotic sustain — thanks in large part to the abundance of soft cello and bass — into five songs (best appreciated as a whole, as usual), punctuated perfectly by weary harmonics that you might swear are crying out to you. While not entirely memorable or new, this album is still good, and Earth’s main man, Dylan Carlson, continues to prove he’s a master craftsman, a man capable of mesmerizing and enlightening us, even when we’ve heard it all before. And yes, Earth fans, that I in the title means that II is on the way.
Listen to “Descent to the Zenith” from Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I!
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan Hawk
Vanguard Records
Yeah, okay, so the folksy, sultry tunes of Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan don’t exactly fall in with the rank and file of doom, metal, and stoner rock that you usually find around here, but the fact of the matter is — if you don’t know this already — Lanegan is a bad-ass, whiskey-voiced deity in the Broken Beard universe. The guy could put out a polka record and I’d still tell you about it because everything he touches (Screaming Trees, The Gutter Twins, Soulsavers, etc.) turns to pure grit, which is what makes his collaborations with Isobel Campbell so great. She, former member of indie pop band Belle & Sebastian, is innocence incarnate, the Scottish girl-next-door with the porcelain voice, and he is the brooding American desperado at the end of the bar. Put ‘em together and you get an old suitcase full of black and white photographs, tear-stained love letters, faded memories, long distance calls from a phone booth in the middle of nowhere, and wordless nights on a porch swing. Hawk, their third album together, is a whole barn full o’ jukebox flare, rustling up a roving range of country-folk, blues, soul, gospel, and Americana, calling to mind the eras and auras of Cash and Carter, Dylan and Baez. Campell’s songwriting on Hawk is utterly moving, playing emotion better than any instrument on the album, and is at once light, languid, deep, and desolate. To help the mood along, the album also offers a few Townes Van Zandt covers and a couple of appearances by Willy Mason. But, as always, this is the Campbell and Lanegan show, which continues to be the strangest, most beautiful show on earth.
Check out the video for “You Won’t Le Me Down Again” from Hawk!
Even though they hail from the City of Angels, Night Horse carry themselves with that Americana swagger befitting East Coast brawlers, chucking big, dopey, boogie-fried riffs at you like ham-sized fists that leave deep, lasting bruises. Picking up where their 2008 debut, The Dark Won’t Hide You, left off, Perdition Hymns lays the Southern stoner rock on nice n’ thick, incorporating plenty of organ, slide, and 70s-infused boxcar blues to send you on a weed-eating nostalgia trip to Altamont and back. Sure, it’s got all the dusty charm of Skynyrd or the Allmans, and sounds like a nasty mix of Cracktorch and the ‘Crowes, but ultimately (and maybe it’s because of the way singer Sam James Velde howls at the blood red moon) the songs on Perdition Hymns come off as bastard inventions from an alternate universe where Danzig grows up a wayward cowboy and not Lucifer’s brawny spawn.
Earth
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
Night Horse