Timber Timbre
Bloody hell, this is excellent. In terms of my own perception, it’s appeared pretty much from nowhere, although Taylor Kirk is in fact three albums into his career now. Spectral and sparse, this record pretty much achieves everything I thought Bon Iver failed to. Not that the two sound all that similar, it’s just that listening to all the press fluff for Bon Iver what I ended up imagining was something more like this gorgeous album, rather than the dull and rather anaemic results with which we were actually presented.
Kirk uses organ and restrained vocal harmonies to create an extremely evocative sound, somewhere between grisly folk tale and macabre, magical movie soundtrack. The guitar riffs are minimal, and the organ chiming and disconcerting. I am not sure if this unsettling, magical quality is entirely due to the lead vocal of Kirk himself, or the accompanying organ noise, or maybe just due to the fact that the whole record is so restrained, but this does sound like the soundtrack to your descent into hell.
Usually that sort of thing is soundtracked by something a bit more fire and brimstone, and this doesn’t really have that, although there’s a definite shade of Nick Cave’s Red Right Hand. For the most part though, it’s just eerie. Kirk himself was raised on a farm in Ontario, and I don’t know if this is one of those things the press make a huge play of because there just isn’t that much other information out there, but the sound of the music could easily evoke the simmering fear of misty farmland at dawn, just as the breaking light brings the shadows in the mist to life with menace.
The violin brings some welcome decorative flourishes to this potentially oppressive mix, with just enough of a blend between familiar folk flourishes and the tension of the rest of the instrumentation to bring a touch of reassuring warmth to the music. I particularly like the way that the whole unsettling journey is brought to a close by the most friendly and accessible arrangement on the album, the gentle and sympathetic No Bold Villain. The fiddle in particular is rather old-timey on this, which is a style it flirts with throughout the album, without ever quite coming good until this tune at the very end. Which is nice, because it provides a comforting happy ending to an album which threatened for a while to be one harrowing horror story after another.
Timber Timbre – Demon Host
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This is a delicious album.
It was self released or something originally, which is where we picked it up last year sometime, & when they got the current label to release it I got terribly excited thinking it was a new album. Still, I’m very glad they’ve got some backing & seem to be getting a fair amount of coverage in the US.
There’s something very authentic about this, very truthful & it’s an album I can play at anytime regardless of mood – it just lifts, regardless of some of the more moribund arrangements. Exquisit stuff.
And, yes, it shits, from a great height, for maximum splattage, on Bon Iver, whom I consider dross.
Now this I like. Bout time you got your game back Mr Toad.
Course you like it. That’s because it’s good.
Game back my arse.
Amazing and warm. I really like his voice. Very autumnal.