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Espers
The bands of “the new weird America” are finally beginning to churn out enough significant art to warrant the last couple of years of hype. Case in point – Espers. Espers I did nothing for me except remind me of things I’ve heard a thousand times before – which is why I was so unprepared for the beautiful and unique Espers II. In a recent live recommendation for the band I spoke of, “lonely echoes of the ghosts of ancient Celtic folk songs haunting the gray haze of Harry B. Smith's rocky American hills – spacious and cinematic, with plenty of distortion, drone, and dissonant instrumental arrangements to locate it in the 21st Century, and, of course their trademark eerie vocal harmonies. Perfect music to be quietly and brutally murdered in the middle of nowhere to – the sound of the new Deliverance.” While I’m not exactly sure what I was talking about, I can honestly say that I’ve been regularly playing this thing for more than a month, get more into it with each spin, and am not close to sick of it. Which is pretty amazing for someone who at best merely respects and tolerates this type of music. Perhaps what separates the latest Espers from their previous work as well as that of their contemporaries are the well-conceived compositions, virtuosic performances, and delicate tension between structure and improvistation. “Dead Queen” gets things going in what appears at first to be typical Renaissance Fair fare until the space is slowly morphed into another animal entirely before flipping right back to the beginning and next taking off once more into a mysterious intensity – never to return. The spacious arrangements shift and build with a couple of particularly wicked distorted guitar solos and string harmonies. You will wear it like a cold death mask. “Widow’s Weed” is a proggy almost Floydian cinematic piece until it cuts off to focus on the inevitable appearance of the Anglophile minor keys of both the acoustic guitar and Meg Baird’s soft vocals. Then the bottled ghosts once again make a screaming escape from the claustrophobic stone interior and make you think that perhaps this band should do away with the acoustic guitar and vocal parts altogether - dropping only these brilliant heavy orchestrations. But then you recognize that their power lies in the tension and release. Admittedly, I never fail to get restless during restrained Fairporty soft vocal harmony music. I know,… dude, I should chill, but, by the time I recognize this in these first two songs, I find the Espers giving me what I was looking for in the first place. The next couple, “Cruel Storm” and “Children of the Stone,” is crowded with more vocals at the expense of the long roomy instrumental forays into other realms. Though these aren’t my favorites, like everything here, the two songs get points for amazing musicianship, interesting arrangements, and loads of passion – and I do wind up getting the thunderous racket that I crave at the end of “Children of the Stone.” “Mansfield and Cyclops” is a bit of an electric guitar-driven hippie jam but the lively rhythm, accelerated tempo, free feel, and pentatonic Easternisms really loosen up the record a bit where it needs it most. And “Dead King” is marks the conclusion of this big D&D fest that was inaugurated with a dead queen. This dense boulder of a song, along with the first couple, is one of the records’ standouts, particularly during the dissonant shift in which the second half of the song becomes all about maniacal modalism, violin sawing, cymbal crashes, wild bongos, constant building, and an ideal conclusion that sounds to me like the dead king joining the dead queen in hell. I want to go back to the beginning to climb on the ride all over again. It’s rare that a record is so well put-together – with all of the songs working towards a bigger whole. The Espers, along with another Drag City band that’s much more reluctant to be associated with the new youth culture, the varied Six Organs Of Admittance, have, within the space of a couple of months put out records that have helped define the next stage of this movement – and in doing so injected it with a bit of the substance and legitimacy it’s needed for some time.
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