Review Summary: The High Confessions have created a great ambient post-rock album. But with a bit more time it could have been so much more.
The High Confessions is a ‘super group’ featuring Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth), Chris Connelly (Ministry, Revolting Cocks, Pigface), Sanford Parker (Minsk, Nachtmystium, Buried at Sea) and engineer Jeremy Lemos (White/Light). ‘Turning Lead into Gold With’ is their first album. Their website describes their sound as ‘a swirling, ominous, droning post-rock that vacillates between a wide-range of textures and moods’. So how super are they?
Even though ‘Turning Lead into Gold with’ only has 5 songs, it offers 53 minutes of music. Music that isn’t specifically Minsk, Ministry or Sonic Youth related, but somehow it’s sound as a logical mix of all their styles. But definitely a Sonic Youth version of their styles. So don’t expect to hear a lot of metal guitars or even a lot of guitars. This is a very ambient post-rock, which is more about creating moods with sound, than it is about playing conventional songs. Listening to this album there were a lot of sounds like moments for me. Primus (listen to the cello like sound during the first minutes of ‘Along Come the Dogs’, and tell me that isn’t Sailing the Seas of Cheese), David Bowie (‘The Listener’) and Nine Inch Nails (the singing in ‘Dead Tenements’) are all names that crossed my mind. Three very different bands, so this must be a diverse album, right?
This album starts with a bit of an outcast. The first song ‘Mistaken for Cops’ is a post-rock-pop song with a very obvious 80’s feel to it. It’s also the only slightly conventional song, being only four minutes long. The other songs are all around ten minutes, with ‘Along Come the Dogs’ ending after sixteen. The other four songs also have a more ambient, almost mantra like feel to them. So where the first song has a certain Sonic Youth feel to it, the other songs feel a lot more like Minsk. So don’t just listen to the first song if you’re going to check this out.
All five songs are very good. They all create a certain atmosphere and take you away on five different musical journeys, which is good, because long songs can get kind of boring after a while. They all have different singing, different sounds and different moods to them, which makes for a very diverse album. Yet the overall feel of this album is there, this feels like an album, not just a bunch of leftovers from their original groups. The only problem I have with this album is that it feels like a cover album. It feels like 5 different bands playing songs of one band and putting their own mark to the songs. Five very good covers, which make one great album, but this never feels like one album by one band.
The High Confessions made a great first album with ‘Turning Lead into Gold’. It sounds great, has good songs that never feel the same, yet it has a great overall mood. The only ‘bad’ thing is that it just doesn’t feel like one band playing all the songs, but does that make this an average album? No it doesn’t, but it does keep you wondering if this were a real band, how much better would this have been?
