The new Jesu kind of bored me, to be honest. It's long, as an album, and all the tracks are long, and nothing seemed to be happening for really long stretches of time. Which is probably the point, somehow, but I didn't love it the way I loved Conqueror.
Anyway, my review, up today at Dusted.
Jesu
Ascension
Caldo Verde
It takes a certain amount of hubris to name your band Jesu. And even more to name your fourth album Ascension. It’s surely no accident that a Google image search of the two terms yields not just Justin Broadrick’s post-Rapture-ish cover art (a deserted playground, a fog-bound park without a trace of human life), but also Sunday-school visuals of Jesus rising up into heaven. The message is clear, if a little blasphemous. On the third day, the stone rolled away from the cave and the master appeared, wearing luminous white robes and floating skyward on clouds of glory and full-throttle guitar distortion.
Not surprisingly, then, Ascension reaches for the sublime early and often. Its slow-moving textures of guitar superimpose giant crashes of sound on the lightness of synthesizer, the faint reassurance of Broadrick’s singing. These songs move at a glacial pace, melodies evolving over multiple measures of sound. And yet, for all their self-conscious grandeur, the tracks on Ascension seem more turgid than revelatory. “Broken Home” moves at a ritual pace, a bell-clear synthesizer melody slipping in and out of the shadow of obliterating guitars, its plainsong verse and vocal flourishes lifting improbably under a ponderous weight. Yet lovely as these elements are, they don’t go anywhere. The song proceeds in a stately march to nowhere, its heaviness an end in itself. And that seems to be the problem with a good bit of Ascension -- that weight never transmutes itself into meaning or crescendo into illumination.
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Showing posts with label Jesu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jesu. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Friday, September 19, 2008
Short, rushed and enthusiastic…two from PW
Reviewing stuff for Philadelphia Weekly is a lot of fun. You pitch records on Wednesday or Thursday, find out Friday if you got any of them, and then spend Friday evening and Saturday trying to get the damn downloads, and Sunday trying to have some sort of opinion on them…by Monday, you’re on the hook for 100 words each, and by Monday night it’s over like it never happened. And, weirdly, the people who bug you about reviewing their records are completely satisfied with this. They even seem to prefer PW reviews to the long, hard-thought-over, 700-1000 word opuses that go into Dusted or PopMatters.
Did I mention I get paid for these?
Strange world, but entertaining…anyway, here are two from this week’s PW. Tomorrow, with any luck, the whole thing starts again.
Blitzen Trapper
Furr (Sub Pop)
Rating: Excellent, like John Oates’ mustache.
Lots of ideas, not much cohesiveness. That’s been the knock on Blitzen Trapper for their first three albums, but with Furr this Portland-based pop-country-jam outfit has KO’d the carpers. From the organ-heavy falsetto-crooning Beatles pop of “Sleepytime in the Western World” through the Grateful Dead shuffle of “Black River Killer” through the surprisingly spare, affecting “Lady on the Water,” Furr packs surprises but not oddities, interesting byways but not pointless wanderings. It’s an album this time, not a collection of hare-brained experiments. Furr transforms Blitzen Trapper’s promise into payoff. (Jennifer Kelly)
“Furr”
Jesu
Why Are We Not Perfect? (Hydrahead)
Rating: Excellent, like John Oates’ mustache.
After inventing grindcore with Napalm Death and setting metal on its studded ear with Godflesh, Justin Broadrick has lately taken a turn toward serenity. Here’s more of the beautiful, fuzz-coated noise he explored in Conqueror, though paced this time by a drum machine rather than an ex-Swan. The title track balances the clarity of keyboards and synthetic percussion against a weighty mass of blurred distortion. Obsessives already have two of these tracks from Jesu’s vinyl only split with Eluvium, but not the alternate takes. Of them “Farewell” reveals the greatest depth. (J.K.)
A video
Did I mention I get paid for these?
Strange world, but entertaining…anyway, here are two from this week’s PW. Tomorrow, with any luck, the whole thing starts again.
Blitzen Trapper
Furr (Sub Pop)
Rating: Excellent, like John Oates’ mustache.
Lots of ideas, not much cohesiveness. That’s been the knock on Blitzen Trapper for their first three albums, but with Furr this Portland-based pop-country-jam outfit has KO’d the carpers. From the organ-heavy falsetto-crooning Beatles pop of “Sleepytime in the Western World” through the Grateful Dead shuffle of “Black River Killer” through the surprisingly spare, affecting “Lady on the Water,” Furr packs surprises but not oddities, interesting byways but not pointless wanderings. It’s an album this time, not a collection of hare-brained experiments. Furr transforms Blitzen Trapper’s promise into payoff. (Jennifer Kelly)
“Furr”
Jesu
Why Are We Not Perfect? (Hydrahead)
Rating: Excellent, like John Oates’ mustache.
After inventing grindcore with Napalm Death and setting metal on its studded ear with Godflesh, Justin Broadrick has lately taken a turn toward serenity. Here’s more of the beautiful, fuzz-coated noise he explored in Conqueror, though paced this time by a drum machine rather than an ex-Swan. The title track balances the clarity of keyboards and synthetic percussion against a weighty mass of blurred distortion. Obsessives already have two of these tracks from Jesu’s vinyl only split with Eluvium, but not the alternate takes. Of them “Farewell” reveals the greatest depth. (J.K.)
A video
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