Review Summary: The curtains draw to a close as Springtime relents. All is wrong in the world, but right in its own way of violence and tall tales, this near-classic tome a witness observing all from a thousand foot view, ants below the airplanes.
Gareth Liddiard (The Drones/ Tropical *** Storm), Jim White (Dirty Three/Xylouris White) and Chris Abrahams (The Necks) are Springtime.
To say these gentlemen are legends in their fields is an understatement. Their body of work in their respective bands transcends conventional music almost entirely, and this second offering from Springtime has very few shortcomings when compared to the standing order of their individual discographies.
Hyperbole aside, yes, this release really is that good.
We begin with the sheer violence of Names of the Plague, a sprawling fifteen minute mood-setter that toes the line of precision musicianship and the archaic flailing of madmen. The angular chords, the wailing delivery of the vocals, the thunderous bossa nova groove that pushes forth and regresses into a backdrop of intentional and unintentional noise, its climaxes are hardly subtle and the footprint this track leaves behind on the entirety of the record is an unsettling connection between possible beauties, and the utter disregard for those notions entirely. There is no safe haven from the morbid curiosity presented in this track, and the shape of what is to come rears its ugly head.
The Radicalization of D comes next. The churning chaos of the previous track gives way to a quiet reservation of dissonant chords breathing air into a fairytale come to life. Over the next nineteen minutes Springtime spins it’s violence into a subdued poetic delivery, a soundscape of indoctrination and morbid intention that begins with an experiment of curiosity and transforms in the end to the ravings of a lunatic and the hand he plays in shaping the world around him through violence and instilled preaching bent towards the suffering of others. The story is a linear yarn of hurt and pain and loneliness converted into hatred and terroristic musings. A boy’s reality is shaped in this disillusion, and the monster he becomes by the end of the track is something unimaginable, yet the presentation of this coming to age is precise and sinister in its delivery. The tale unfolds before the listener in spoon-fed heavy-handedness that accentuates the rawness and the loose structure of the track. The music is unimportant by itself, but paired with these mutterings of fragile minds perverted it becomes sublime on its own accord. The final lines of this suite will leave you breathless. A city burns by his hands, or perhaps it is all a distant memory of these preachings?
The album closes with a poignant live performance of Penumbra, a slow burner in its own right that gives way to a bash of noise at its midpoint. The vocals on this track are especially reserved and particular, each syllable presented in a way that is both musical and raw in the same breath. The crowd beneath the surface of the music drowns itself in the crashing waves as Liddiard muses about pilots in the war and what becomes of them as they return home. The track doubles down on the touching piano refrain from the beginning of the song and trails off into the thin ambience of a crowd hopefully realizing the spectacle they had just witnessed.
The curtains draw to a close as Springtime relents. All is wrong in the world, but right in its own way of violence and tall tales, this near-classic tome a witness observing all from a thousand foot view, ants below the airplanes.
