Comments
11 years ago
Anybody who loves this track like a hurricane is advised to check out Melissa auf der Maur's first solo album. There are many parallels with the soundscape here.Meanwhile, here is an extract from a much longer review I posted of Spooky on Amazon - you may be interested to check it out, it's posted under my own name:"...45 minutes later, I've hammered the bicycle through heavy rush-hour traffic and a rainstorm of biblical proportions, and I'm back at the flat, dripping wet, and in serious need of a coffee and some dry clothes. Put some of the new music on... first out of the bag is... Spooky. I'm standing there in the middle of the room with the rain dripping off my clothes and a cup of black coffee, and the first notes of Stray (9/10) come scrawling out of the speakers. Not too sure about this... but wait: an overdriven, cranked-up slab of jangly guitars is overlaid by some columnar female vocal harmonies to sweeten the broiling, evil-sounding cauldron, and then there is an explosion of angry, jagged guitars. It's over all too soon, but only to segué into the pulsating, menacing screed of effects-laden mediaeval incantation of Nothing Natural (10/10). This is a blistering, incandescent wall of noise, with effects aplenty, but only adequate to the track's air of barely concealed fury and menace. Many of the vocal lines here take on a raga-like quality as Miki's voice slithers around the ends of each line. I love the way where, at 2 points, 3:44 and 4:58, the backing almost completely drops out, leaving the song stranded on an empty planet, and builds again, leaving Emma's 3-note guitar phrases to carry the piece back to full-on power-blast (the 3-note phrases actually start a whole lot further back than you might realise, at 4:04, but only become prominent some way later, when you realise she's been doing this for a while... the stunning, multi-layered, contrapuntal, wordless vocal harmonies build up and orbit the gravitational well of the bass with such skill that details like this only become apparent with repeated listening). As if this isn't enough of a tasty mélange, the whole of the last minute and a quarter is then suffused with stereo-panned white noise swooshes and phased guitar, which ends up after 5 and a half minutes in a maelstrom of arpeggiated triplets and swirling effects. Pure genius, and along with For Love and the closing track, are the most utterly, blissfully beautiful and commandingly authoritative tracks in my entire collection. This is at once definitive shoegaze, and yet entirely of itself.All bets are off after this: what comes next could be almost anything - and yet it's surprising for the foregoing blitz of sound to be supplanted by the sweetest pop song you could ever imagine coming from this genre of music. Tiny Smiles (10/10) has one of the most deceptively tricksy melodies, which must have been really difficult to sing, but sounds effortless (try whistling it, and you'll see what I mean!) It completes the best opening trio of contiguous songs on any album EVER, and although there are no keyboards on this album, the brief instrumental breaks on this track would be totally worthy of infilling by one of Tony Banks' decorative herbaceous (key)borders so prevalent on and signatory to any Genesis album; it is tribute to Miki and Emma's talents that it survives winningly without such intervention. If only for these 3 opening tracks, you really need to buy this album."