Talons
New Topographics

4.0
excellent

Review

by Dan H. EMERITUS
July 30th, 2014 | 31 replies

Release Date: 2014 | Tracklist

Review Summary: The stories behind the ruins.

When I think in depth about modern city life, I come away with two constrasting images. The first is a world of plenty, characterised by the affluency of the people, the embarrassment of riches on offer, and the bright, ever changing advertising boards. The second is a bleaker picture, dominated by poverty, and peppered with industrial buildings. I imagine poor workers trudging to and from factories each day just to make ends meet, living on the bread-line, surrounded by newly abandoned buildings which are slowly being reclaimed by the earth. New Topographics is derived from a photography project bearing the same name, and it sought to capture the power, if not at first the beauty, of the stark and the real. It chooses to highlight tired, decaying buildings in a bid to champion them, and to give people a glimpse into what went on inside those crumbling walls for decades. Our heavily airbrushed society places such an emphasis on one dimensional external beauty, that the various forms it takes are often completely ignored. Talons, like William Jenkins’ exhibition before them, are challenging this concept by capturing the moody, the expansive, the eerie and the state of ruin by showing that if you look hard enough, you can find something to admire just about anywhere.

New Topographics sees Talons expand their sound exponentially, to one which builds ambitiously and without fear, to one where repetition is welcomed with open arms and dense atmospheres obscure practically all else from view. The songs all feel incredibly comfortable in their own skin, and they swell slowly adding more little by little, all the while ensuring that they don’t collapse under their own weight. Just take mammoth opener ‘Monuments;’ heavily reverberated guitars scream unaided until they’re joined by a thick bassline and foreboding violins - building and building in stature until finally a brief respite is allowed. Rather like the remainder of the album, the song quickly regains momentum, surging once again into the thick of things until its completion. Most importantly, it’s the atmosphere and the feelings which are evoked that makes ‘Monuments’ so powerful. It conjures pictures of desolate landscapes, neglected and ravaged by time. It makes you picture the despair that comes with finding out that you’re no longer significant, and further compounds it with the knowledge that you will never again be restored to your former glory. It may be sad, but it also allows you to explore the bountiful times and the stories behind the wreckages. It lets you wonder just how important it used to be, how vital a hub it once was, and it encourages you to imagine the lives that were once touched by its existence.

It continues this provocative theme throughout. It paints bleak, but very real pictures through its crushing volleys of guitars and strings, and it strikes a deeply ingrained emotional chord, one which can only truly be hit when we’re completely engulfed by something efficacious. Despite how long it lingers in the eerie and perturbed, New Topographics still manages to be accessible, and it leaves you feeling pensive rather than destitute. Just like the exhibition many years ago, Talons have proven that there really is beauty everywhere, especially in the places where you least expect it.

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