Imagine putting several centuries of bloody history -- dead kings,
ruthless mutinies, prison riots, famine, cannibalism, rape -- and
encasing them in the fragile shell of a sprawling Dublin-based lo-fi
band with poets scribbling out the words and a genius at the boards.
That's what you get with the Joan of Arse's excellent new album
Distant Hearts, A Little Closer, which ditches their lo-fi
scratch for some precision sonics courtesy of Steve Albini, and which
features some of the finest lyrics I've heard in some time (though I
can't for the life of me figure out which band member wrote them). You'd
think the band's name is intended to mock the power of history, but
these guys have obviously absorbed a millennium of blood trails and laid
them out in a beautifully conceived series of tunes that put arseholes,
uprisings, and angst into unique perspective. The sound ranges from
Dirty Three dirges to old-timey Feelies raveups. Plus you get to stare
at the astounding cover art by Low's Zak Sally.
At seven songs clocking in at 45 minutes, the album is sometimes noisy,
but mostly it's a dreamy, melancholy downer, stripped of self-pity but
still creaking like an old boat. Steve Albini's steady hand at the
boards apparently forced some discipline into the boys, because these
tunes are quite a departure from the anarchy of Arse's first album
Out to Sea. The opener, "The Slaves Are in the Galley, Sharpening
their Oars" has the crashing chords and brave sing-speak of an old
Pavement tune, creating the impression that you're about to get some
hi-fi variations of the Arse's old lo-fi scratch. Although the sharpened
oars of the lyrics don't exactly split your skull right away, they do
detail a potent source of class (or maybe nationalist) rage: "You eat
your young for your breakfast / So we laced you kids with arsenic,
you've sure gone pale." It's a great start, but then the album slows up
so fast you'll get whiplash.
Not exactly slo-core, not exactly dirge, the next three tunes wobble on
a sagging tightrope between beauty's sky and languor's floor. Hooked by
a Neil-Young style harmonica "Things Asleep in the Sun" is a
tough-hearted ballad that details a fascinating character, part-asshole
part-genius. I'm not sure if the subject is someone we all know (Jackson
Pollock? Shane MacGowan?), but it's an enchanting portrait: "He's eating
off the floor and he's playing in the dirt / With all the babies. /
Evolution saw him sleeping and decided it was best / Just not to wake
him." The song ends on a crescendo of sea-chantey-style singing, and
before you know it the album's centerpiece, "A Spell Cast With Fingers",
begins snaking it's way round your temporal lobe.
I'll be honest with you: the first time I heard "Spell Cast With
Fingers", I hated it. Painfully slow, with high-pitched vocals and
mandolins and violins and the overall feel of a tedious slo-core
trad-piece, I just couldn't get with it. But then it never left me: now
I wake up hungover with the damn thing ringing out in my heart and
spleen, and it's one of the best songs of 2002 by any measure. Unlike
most of our pomo stabs at tradition (cf. Will Oldham), this song doesn't
cling to the shore, but actually ventures out into the open sea, and
when the gale comes the tune braves it. You'll feel it when the voice
abruptly turns from tenderness to menace about midway through, and when
the violins and mandolins start layering themselves into anarchy.The
words are an astounding evocation of the bitterness and pain in a
loveless coupling: "He'd cum raw as gravel /That tore its way in to your
womb. / The child clawed to stay in /Like the secret in your hand." Dark
as whiskey and just as wet, I play this tune when the slow-boil of
existential rage starts in. Not daily, exactly, but often enough.
Another ponderous one slips in and out at the close of Side A. "Was
Christ Among Us That Night" starts out as an atmospheric piano-and-voice
piece with above-average lovey-dovey lyrics ("We're at the start of a
memory / That I'll hold deep in my heart"). Takes a while, but the
dynamics do change and finally there's some loud bass, shredded feedback
and a veritable cacophony of wonderful words with insects rushing into
the house and dogs curling at their feet.
Side B is noisier and wordier. "The Bellringers Warning & Other Stories"
has a nice openhearted guitar-crunch that whips through the adenoidal
vocals, but the best part is the guitar pileup toward the end, a
wrenching and beautiful noise blast that probably brought a twinkle to
Albini's jaded eye. And oh yeah: the tune itself a wonderfully detailed
story of regicide and revolution: "The last thing the disgraced king
sees as the noose goes round his neck / Is a stranger walking away
paying no attention to his death." This heartwarming tale leads directly
into the epic-at-ten-minutes "At the Feet of St. Peter", which has the
spare, rhythmic dynamics of an old Feelies track, but with some noisy
and riotous guitar'n'drum raveups as the tune unspools.
Finally, we all get charmed by the beautiful closer, "Watching Films
with the Sound Down". Mandolin and accordion get you all weepy as you
listen to this heart-wrenching recollection of loves past: "In the
working place they think I'm drinking / But the bags beneath my eyes are
full of love." I'm not sure exactly what they mean when they quote Cat
Stevens toward the end, but it works.
In the end you're left with a sublime, exhausted feeling, as if too many
nasty tragedies and heroic uprisings have circled round your head in
under an hour. In a way, it's a real achievement, and it's a relief to
see a band that stays away from navel-gazing, selfish melodrama, or
randomizing when they stir up their lyrics. Joan of Arse are a necessary
corrective, and it's nice to see that "post-rock" has circled back to
the solid ground.
— 17 January 2003
