It’s not easy to make a cover song unless you decide to repeat the same formula of the original. The problem is that if you do so, you are literally mimicking without adding a surplus of creativity.
Take for example a book that you read. If you read it just once, you probably will stick to the narrative in order to follow the main plot. In a second reading you will take notice of things that escaped when you first read it. That’s where the book truly begins the moment you reconstruct its narrative and make it your own. The same happens with a theater play or a film script or in this case with a song.
After their beautiful and addictive debut album “Encompass” Hamsas Xiii are working on some new material and released last Valentine’s Day their brand new single which is a cover of the song “Let’s Go Out Tonight” written by Paul Buchanan from the 80’s Scottish band “The Blue Nile”. This song is part of their second and most successful album, “Hats”, which gave them the possibility to tour as Rickie Lee Jones support act during her US Flying Cowboys Tour in 1990. As a band “The Blue Nile” was particularly influenced by bands/musicians such like 10 CC, Roxy Music/Brian Ferry, Steely Dan, and Japan/David Sylvian, which somehow enabled them to build this sort of a certain kind of lush and posh nocturnal adult cinematic pop.
The cover now released by Hamsas Xiii makes the original look ordinary and uninteresting, even boring because they have transformed the song in such a way that they made the cover sound much better than the original with a Goth-esque approach to the original song. Hamsas Xiii made the song much darker transformed it in a wonderful, desperate chaotic love lament where keys remind Diamanda Galas though the song evolves in a more This Mortal Coil-esque direction, displaying a dense piano atmosphere, weaving layers of sound cut by a jagged edgy guitar blasting in the distance while a steady pounding snare sound keeps the rhythmic texture. The vocals are simply brilliant and heartfelt.
This week we have Portland’s based band The Shrike album review. The band was named after an iconic character from the “Hyperion Cantos”, a science fiction novel series and was formed back between late 2012 and early 2013, by Matt Sipes (bass), Jamie Lynn (vocals and violin), Steven "The Craw" Hall (guitar) and Darren "Pitbull" Linder (drums).
After almost two years of songwriting the band decided to head to the Opal Studio, up in Portland, to take the music to the next stage of commitment. The year of 2014 would not end without “The Shrike” debut full-length being recorded with a little help from producer and mixing engineer Kevin Hahn.
The tastes and musical influences of each one of “The Shrike” founding members of are wide and variegated. They range from the classic Slavic composer Leos Janacek to Slayer; from Rush to Dead Can Dance though one can not actually find evidence of either Janacek or Dead Can Dance in their work. The Shrike is above all effectively influenced by led Zeppelin, Heart, Rush, Kansas and Montrose.
The problem is that this risk to over simplify their sound. Due to previously mentioned variegation of individual musical influences we are confronted with a much richer tapestry of sonic intertwining than just the mere hard and heavy rock formula.
It is precisely because of their inner diversity which constitutes the band’s most valuable asset considering that they don't play only by the hard rock book of golden rules (if there is any) that their compositions and creativeness finds its berth on pretty eclectic sources which allow them to properly claim that they are building a sound of their own and not only mimicking the classic hard and heavy blast.
The Shrike has a non-mainstream feature that is the use of the electric violin and this peculiarity contributes to add to their music a Celtic turn, a gipsy feel, an eastern touch of class to some of their songs resulting in a pleasant combination with both the top-notch guitar riffs plus the killer rhythm section that, after having listened to their album more than a dozen times, enables us to consider that “The Shrike” are indeed far from purely being a hard rock band and decidedly not a heavy metal one.
The Shrike is much closer to what some 70s so called hard rock bands did and the way some of them slowly headed towards a certain prog-rock and folk rock experimentation just like Uriah Heep and Nazareth have done than the opposite.
The Shrike debut album best kept secret builds upon not only on the undeniably good rhythm section filled with energetic and elaborate drumming, along with some vigorous bass lines that apart a Slayer and Slipknot temptation seem quite indebted of blues-jazzy and funky rhythmic patterns.
But there is also a very good guitar work with a rather pretty cool set of riffs and some well crafted chord progressions and some poisonous soloing that spread throughout the bunch of songs. Last but not least there is that portion of additional magic powders provided by a thrilling electric violin that inevitably pushes the band to the above mentioned Eastern/Celtic-Irish/Gypsy groove.
Finally, a brief note about the vocals which are undeniably good. Jamie Lynn has a powerful sweet voice and nice timbre though I doo disagree with the Ann Wilson/Pat Benatar comparison because there is a clear difference of vocal range and release between the three of them.
In overall terms “The Shrike” first long play has a good set of songs from which I’d highlight the stand out ones: The Return, Fall in Line and Shark. As a final word, it pleases me to say that the album was a nice aural experience, it denotes that there is really good individual as well collective musicianship which turns out to be a great working basis for the next album (besides the fact that Matt Sipes has parted ways with the band and was replaced by Roya Hellbender, whom I am sure will keep the bass lines blasting).
In any case this album left me with the feeling that the band is still thriving for an aesthetic/conceptual definition of their musical choices which explain the great variety of influences and details all along the album. This album is a good starting point, a good draft for the future, and we have to expect that the band can reach a higher evolutionary musical stage.
If I could give any word of advice to The Shrike I would definitely say that they should focus on either hard and heavy or prog-rock or just classic rock but avoid mixing them all because such a choice would ruin the uniqueness they seek for. I truly foresee great potential in this Portland four piece, so i do expect that they can step forward in style.
INDIEVOTION rating for The Shrike self-titled debut album: 7.0/10
The Morelings formed by Kedra Caroline (bass and vocals) and Matthew William (guitars) are definitely one of the most serious cases of talent and aesthetic intentionality of the present indie music scene. Their career is inevitably punctuated by a rather accurate sense of purpose translated in a beautiful blend of dreamy sonic wall and nostalgic imagery that traverses time dimensions.
Today they have released the official imagery for the title track of “No Sign” EP (2015) and by doing so, they have beyond doubt closed (at least for me), a mesmerizing triad of videos perfectly matching the very essence of the set of songs from their debut EP.
If there is something absolutely fascinating concerning The Morelings is their clear statement of a proper aesthetic conception resulting in the "naissance" of a clear filmographic emphasis sustaining as well as supporting the poetic energy of music and lyrics of each song. That’s what is hardly visible in loads and loads of bands: aesthetic coherence between words, music and image.
The Morelings clearly understand that this question matters and that explains the common language adopted in all the three videos easily translating them into a unique piece of music and film. Most music videos lack of coherence simply because they seem to illustrate songs as they were separate elements and they attach an image to those songs that the mainstream people can easily attach to. Thankfully The Morelings go the opposite way.
Every video from the band is plenty of amazing pieces of detail ranging from a physical or metaphorical permanence of veils, slightly blurred image juxtaposition, the fluidity of natural elements, some intense Polaroid-esque feel namely on “Too Far” video, a transverse sense of elegance that is not superimposed, among some few other aspects. Overall it prevails a thrilling semiotic persistance where The Morelings are seriously grounded and from where they build some aura of exquisite myth and that is the right thing to be done. One final, but not less important word for the sublime and immaculate work of filmmaker Bob Sweeney.
I have written once in some incidental comment that The Morelings stand as one of the best things after Cocteau Twins. I stick to that very statement without any disrespect for the work of so many bands that I love and follow. By saying this I mean that in the actual state of the indie music scene The Morelings emerge as the perfect heirs and best interpreters of what I consider the classic shoegaze/dream pop sonic boundary, so brilliantly crafted by the above mentioned well-known trio of Glaswegian shoegazers. The Morelings are a post-punk, shoegaze dream pop duo (although they have started as trio), based in Philadelphia and formed by Kedra Caroline (bass and vocals) and Matthew William (guitars).
The band started back in the summer of 2013 when Kedra Caroline and Matthew William following previous musical common interests began working on a few song ideas. The songwriting process surely went pretty well because they’ve soon decided to move forward. In January 2014, The Morelings were ready to take their music to another level of sound maturity already with Chris Jordan in control of the drum kit. During the summer of 2014 they had the opportunity to play a set of several shows, allowing them to go through live performance and song confidence ability test as well as measure the public reception and reaction to their work. In September and October of that same year they got back again to the studio for the final recording and mixing details of what would become the immensely beautiful three song debut EP “NO SIGN” which would be officially released in January 8th 2015.
A whole year has gone by after the band began working on their debut EP recording project and the world would soon be ready for the dreamiest fifteen minutes forty-six seconds trip of ethereal vocals, dreamy guitar and tantalizing percussion of 2015... My first encounter with The Morelings left me with the feeling that they had been playing and writing songs together for ages considering the expressiveness of their work which strangely denoted quite an impressive “how-we-want-it-to-sound-like-and-where-we-want-to-go” state of mind because as an emerging band and taking into account the non-imitative way they seemed to be re-creating and setting the pathways of their sound. Above all what I have digested from this initial “Hey-we-are-The Morelings” was that all of a sudden I got struck by a time warp that drove me back and forth in loop mode to and through the 80s and back again by means of a masterfully non-visible hand of subtlety and refreshing sonic textures that I am sure to have heard before with a similar powerful spellbinding effect.
The Morelings have that mystique aura of mystery that easily gives room to another time dimension within that time road where one is supposedly travelling through and pushes us towards a nostalgic delight, some refined past perfect where the recurrent tridimensionality of past, present and future work as a phenomenological blend that make one long for a future that is yet to come, but which in fact is located in the past and all this dialectics of time balanced by a present that never really is because it flows at the speed of light. The outcome of it all is something like a rare fusion of memoirs, presence, absence and longing simultaneously entwining. A daydream gaze.
As someone permanently searching for new bands in the indie music bandwidth I have to say that I did find The Morelings by mere lucky strike while googling for shoegaze/dream pop novelties in the cyberspace. Clearly stated previously, the first strong feeling I had about them was that they sounded like Cocteau Twins circa 83. The Morelings have totally surprised me with that uncommon gift of making me literally re-vivify emotions from thirty years ago which is almost an absurdity. What an amazing experience it is when you’re suddenly floating on air in fluffy clouds of nostalgia. A priceless treasure of limitless beauty.
I remember that I stood frozen like for some moments completely stunned and chilled. What a strange feeling it was. Years after a moment in time a different band from a different place on earth has the same effect on us as The Cocteau Twins have had years before. The very same past life sensation the very same out of time experience. Am I getting lame or what?! All this got me wondering about how amazingly fantastic this was, but why would a North American band from Philadelphia sound so exquisitely to Cocteau Twins without even daring to imitate them, though perfectly sketching the very essence of timelessness ideal embedded in the work of the famed Scottish shoegazers? Considering that if we go back to the early 80s, Philadelphia and Glasgow have probably anything else in common this was a little bit weird.
When one considers that the core substance of The Cocteau Twins sonority lies between 80 and 84 which is equivalent to say between “Garlands” and “Victorialand” that makes it even harder to put in perspective the fact that three young individuals sounded to me like they were doing this for ages in 2015. For a moment I’ve even considered if The Morelings could either be a tribute band or by any astrophysical chance a parallel universe version of the Cocteau Twins without being them because as written before and this ought to be highlighted they are far from being imitators or replicators of a formula of sound.
The Morelings stand out as original and genuine. Yes, I have listened to this Philly trio dozens of times on repeat mode. I still do. Don’t get any fed up with it. There were times when I compulsively had to plunge myself into The Morelings before sleeping to get anihilated in the depths of their musical dreamland. The band builds an almost ghostly spectral sonic atmosphere resulting in some sort of solemn pagan liturgy reinforced by the fact that front woman Kedra Caroline naturally imposes herself as a cinematic character out off of French nouvelle vague movie aesthetics. She looks like 60s and 70s French singer France Gall, but her voice has the tone and homesickness of highly famed French singer Françoise Hardy which means that I can perfectly imagine Kedra Caroline starring in one of Godard, Chabrol or Rohmer films.
When one finds a band like The Morelings it is almost inevitable not to acknowledge that they’ve perfectly understood how that magnificent unstoppable wheel of layered sounds where Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, Echo and The Bunnymen, The Chameleons spun their magic threads works. Why am i saying it? Well there would be no shoegaze or dreampop without The Banshees. They are quintessential to The Cocteau Twins early sound matrix. Apart from what I’ve just said The Morelings poiesis or artistic process does not seem to be solely rooted in the late 80s post punk shoegaze and dream pop. Quite the opposite. The band seem to be pretty well identified with the first half of the 80s decade, but surprise, surprise, surprise they also to be in tune with mid 70s dreamy existential folk gaze.
It may sound astonishingly absurd, but when listening to the Philly based trio work, it comes to mind the likes of sublime Sandy Denny “Who Knows Where The Time Goes”, Richard and Linda Thompson “I want to see the Bright Lights Tonight” creative period, the great Nick Drake “Things Behind The Sun” or “Northern Sky” not to mention the omnipresence of Bert Jansch and bits of early baroque John Renbourn in the layers of sound, waving out from Matthew William guitar playing, in spite of Kedra Caroline vocal arrangements actually giving quite some help to sustain this so called relatively diffused folk influence not to mention the percussion embellishments also so present in the mid 70s existential folk.
As stated a few lines above, I went chasing for other potentially significant influences that could be spotted in The Morelings work considering that i have listened not only to their EP but to all of their available material and songs being two of them covers. One is from New Order’s “Lonesome Tonight” and the other one a cover of “Stars in Your Eyes” from a coup de coeur of mine the marvellous bass player Kendra Smith (wherever she is) a founding member of Dream Syndicate and Opal. When one listens to a wider range of songs by The Morelings that allows us to conclude that, for instance, there is no audible contribution from Lush like some seem to believe as well as there is none from Slowdive either.
If I am permitted to say it there is no escape for the Philadelphia trio from the Cocteau Twins tetrahedral construction which includes “Garlands”, “Head Over Heels”, “Treasure” and “Victorialand”. They are immersed and soaked into that universe without regret. Anyway, there seems to be some other visible influence coming from the likes of The Chameleons “Script of The Bridge” seminal album. All of this carefully seasoned with Paisley Underground reminiscences.
This consideration may seem abusive at first, but when one listens to The Morelings EP under a Cocteau Twins radar all doubts vanish. If we apply the same procedure to songs such as “Before” and “I Swear” we can easily listen The Chameleons more than resonating in the background, though it really is The Cocteau Twins atmosphere that reigns like an elegant foam cloud all through The Morelings eight song set.´In fact, when one picks the magnificent EP “NO SIGN”, a rare case of aesthetic coherence and cohesiveness which stands by its own merit as one of the highest EP moments of 2015.
The melodic nature, intrinsic to the three songs of the EP fully affirm the density of post punk legacy in a dream pop, shoegaze framework something that isn’t surprising at all because “NO SIGN” tunes itself mostly in the obscure anxiety presented in "Garlands" and "Head Over Heels" dragging within the very essentials of post punk like for instance the steady hypnotic elaborate bass lines, the exploding guitar choruses with shimmering clean delays or glassy diffused tones, the tribal drumming upgraded with rhythmic patterns which help the vocals to rise to the borderline of undisclosed open spaces flirting with nostalgic ambient. The Morelings are as far as we know, actively working on their first and long awaited full-length and we estimate that it would be one of the most ethereally beautiful moments of 2016 .
