Released 2002
[For an explanation of Season Albums and Pivotal Albums, please go here.]
Agalloch is one of those bands that, if I bothered to organize and write out my Top 50 Albums of All Time, would so easily dominate the top of the list that the effort would seem to be pointless in the end. They'd have two albums in the Top 10 and an EP in the Top 15 — it just wouldn't seem fair, though it would reflect how important (pivotal, if you will) their music has become to me. Agalloch is one of those bands — and I hope everyone has at least a few of their own — that is so perfectly tapped into what I desire and enjoy in music that their albums are literally flawless to me, every element so shockingly interesting and engaging with every listen that, no matter how many times I've heard it before, each time I'm surprised to find just how much I like them.
Despite forming over a decade ago, Agalloch's blend of dark atmospheric folk, post-rock soundscapes and black metal gravitas has proven too intricate and complex to spawn any successful imitators. Those who try seem to capture no more than one or two elements of Agalloch's sound, dividing it up until the result is meaningless, or silly. On paper, Agalloch doesn't seem all that far removed from the many gimmicky "folk metal" bands out there, but Agalloch isn't interested in simply re-appropriating some traditional musical style — despite my usage of the genre term "folk." What they're playing sounds folky, but the actual elements are not stolen specifically from anywhere. There are some unique pieces of instrumentation, sure, but you almost don't notice them, and they're certainly not the focus. In "The Lodge", for instance, Agalloch creates a surreal echo by striking a deer skull — but you would never realize what you were hearing unless you read it somewhere. Other songs feature the deep, creepy menace of a cello, or sound clips of footsteps crunching snow, but the songs are driven by simple, standard instrumentation, written in such a way as to evoke a cold winter landscape and carried to perfection by the harsh, dual-vocals and lyrical paganism.
Perhaps the problem of capturing Agalloch's success (or even getting Pandora to recommend anything remotely similar) lies in the term "folk". Not only has it been around forever (literally), it's currently one of the most re-interpreted and re-imagined genres out there, other than metal. There's a reason why folk music is forced to embrace every bearded, flannel wearing dude who just wants to strum his acoustic and recite poetry in a breathy voice — well, other than the fact that "I want to have sex with the largest possible number of girls with the least amount of effort" is too long to catch on as a genre term. Folk has always been around because it is traditional music, which is by necessity always in flux, played by "the people," so to speak. Traditional instruments can be a part of it, but "folk" literally means "people," and thus singer-songwriters are always sort-of folk regardless of their actual musical orientation. Thus, for all its vagueyness and ability to transform into confusing other things, folk is a terrible term when you're trying to denote an incredibly specific sound — as anyone who wishes to describe Agalloch's music certainly is. I'd argue that there should, in fact, be an invented genre term so bands who actually evoke the feeling of being in nature can distinguish themselves — I've heard the term "soundscape" used before, though seldomly, and I'd argue that it's a far more accurate indicator than just another "folk" subbranch with a silly name.
Since this is not a review, I'm not going to spend much time analyzing the actual music of The Mantle. It's complex in a shifting, understated way, though deceptively straightforward in execution, and as is the case with pretty much every band I editorialize on here, I feel like I would spend the majority of my words just defending the fact that cross-genre hybrids can work without feeling cluttered and disjointed. There's a clear trend in what I enjoy: textured, layered music that doesn't just borrow from one genre, and even after combining its elements together into a coherent sound, doesn't fit easily into another. Songs on The Mantle are long and patiently crafted, unhurried and expansive, pagan, cold, eerie; they make you feel like you're stranded in a lodge in the middle of the woods, in winter. The vocals — the most metal aspect of the band — are likely difficult for new listeners, but match the cold textures and dynamics of Agalloch's songwriting, both harsh and clean vocals soon blending into the layered sounds surrounding them. If you listen to The Mantle in summer, it will still sound like winter (Agalloch has another album for summer). If you listen to it driving through the Catskills in a fancy SUV, you will still feel desolate and trapped and cold. Though it's never particularly heavy, fast-paced or intimidating in the way that most metal is, this is a brutal album as much as it is a beautiful album. The Mantle isn't made to be played at festivals or Burning Man; it isn't a commentary on the fastidiousness or overproduction of modern music; it isn't a reproduction of the bloody good old days of European battle-songs and beer-filled taverns; it has nothing at all to do with people — it is the outdoors, and the influence is inescapable.
No comments:
Post a Comment