Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Red Sparowes
Label: Conspiracy Records
Release: 2010
Length: 43:02
Rating: 4.8/5
How do you write a worthy elegy for a present-day world in total collapse without needlessly chipping away at the wholeness of global grayness and despair? Words are hollow and empty. When someone sets out to preach successfully, they’re all too often tuned out, clever words and fancy phrases notwithstanding. And yet all of us, in this jungle of nonsense and deception, are meant to dig up the truth in its deepest sense. All of us who refuse to settle for numbness and the convenience of pondering meanings. Part of this modern sermon is also a compendium of sound and fractals of hidden meanings, the kind that plenty of post rock heroes compose about – the Americans Red Sparowes among them.
The pledge of silence, of expressing content through music alone, carries on. Four years after the outstanding post-apocalyptic painting of near-future reflections on the album Every Red Heart Shines Toward the Red Sun, the shamans of sonic impressions are back with only a slightly, barely changed lineup. This incarnation gravitates around the core of Bryant Clifford Meyer, guitarist of the now-defunct Isis, and former Angel Hair member Andy Arahood. The bass vignettes are the domain of Greg Burns, a member of Halifax Pier. Behind the drums sits David Clifford once again, of The VSS and Pleasure Forever, and the only change is really a guitar shot of estrogen in the form of Emma Ruth Rundle of Nocturnes. There’s a change on the label side too: they left their former label Neurot Records and moved to their home label Sergant House, otherwise a subsidiary of Conspiracy Records. Four years were, at first glance, plenty for the band to mature further and take shape. If the previous two records swore by mile-long titles and pouring meaning out into the printed word, this time the reckoning with the worship of a crumbling present and the idolatry of a postmodern world of mental, spiritual and ideological numbness is condensed into tighter forms.
The opening whisper of familiar echoes comes with Truth Arise only to prime you for the hurricane of emotion that follows, this time more transparent and punchy. Unlike the earlier emotional softness and seeming lack of balls, this third lesson is more metal and built to please. In Illusions Of Order starts off with a hypnotic bass and soothing sounds of what are practically war drums. The rhythmic scheme is simple, and the mantra-like guitar weaving, with its gradual distortion, climbs until your little room is suddenly saturated with rainbows of guitars, the devastating rhythmic crumbling of drums and a fat, heavy, saturated bass. Red Sparowes show off a new set of tricks. A Hail Of Bombs serves up the beauty of sliding along the neck of a pedal steel guitar and carries you into the musical stratosphere, above all through outstanding production touches. Production duties this time went to the secret conspirator behind Melvins and Tool, Toshi Kasai, who squeezed the best out of what was once an almost claustrophobically cramped beauty and poured the nectar into a form that stands out so much better on a bigger canvas. The palette of sounds is triumphant and pompous.
The imagined saviors are exposed, the swarming of the masses toward the inevitable end is so obvious, and dying and the passing of moments haven’t been this saturated with beauty, eroticism and longing for a move from pain into something lasting for the future in a long time. The transience of the present in service of a firmer future is the final message, or just one of them. The pious images have faded. The only center of gravity and existence sits in your ears, and through your ears straight in your heart. What you do with it is up to you. All other meanings are superfluous, and foreign words sung are empty. What remains behind the last mask of them all is the pure extract of truth, which you can only sense, never fully behold … The Fear Is Excruciating, But Therein Lies The Answer is definitely a record made for repeated listening, for digging deeper and discovering all the hidden meanings! And that’s just my piece of the mosaic of truth!
Lineup
Bryant Clifford Meyer – guitar
Andy Arahood – guitar, bass
Greg Burns – bass, pedal steel guitar
David Clifford – drums
Emma Ruth Rundle – guitar
Production
Red Sparowes & Toshi Kasai
Tracklist
1. Truths Arise
2. In Illusions of Order
3. A Hail of Bombs
4. Giving Birth to Imagined Saviors
5. A Swarm
6. In Every Mind
7. A Mutiny
8. As Each End Looms and Subsides
