This CD represnts a departure for the Louisville, Kentucky trio of Jeff
Mueller, Jason Noble, and Kyle Crabtree. For Three-Four, they have taken an
approach not unlike that which produced the unintended results of the
Beatles' White Album, where the individual personality of each member is
allowed to dominate different tracks. In the case of The Shipping News,
however, this move is intentional, with most of this collection drawn from
three seperate ep's of material, recorded almost entirely by one member or
another, released the year before.
Even so, Three Four has a dark simmering tension overall, and much of the
music lives just this side of combustion without ever doing so.
Jeff Mueller's first two songs, 'Sickening Bridge Versus Horrible Bed' and
'Dogs', take a conversation lyrical approach sung in disconnect worthy of
Roger Waters, sad post-modern cowboy laments.
'...Diamond Lined Star...' imposes more poetic rhythms to the lyrical
structure, in verse like
'uselessly violent,
senselessly silent,
you don't say a word,
symtoms are minimal,
murdering criminal,
you don't care at all'
Mueller's final offering, 'Everglade' is an instrumental begging for melody,
and though it desperately wants to be a song, it fortunately knows not to
overstay it's welcome.
Jason Noble's contributions have the broadest stylistic range of the three.
'Paper Lanterns' and 'We Start To Drift' find their inspiration in
somnambulism, the latter ending in three-and-a-half minutes (nearly the equal
of that which precedes it) of (Brian not Roger) Eno-esque sonic landscape.
'Variegated' (1 : to diversify in external appearance especially with
different colors, or 2 : to enliven or give interest to by means of variety,
from 1653, according to Webster's Dictionary) is the most openly dissonant
and harmonically experimental track of Three-Four. minimalist in both
arrangement and form (and makes me think that Mr Noble and Billy Joel woudl
generally disagree as to the importance of a song having a middle-eight),
beside 'You Can't Hide The Mark Inside', a relentless post punk guitar/drum
assault.
'Non-Volant' is a slightly twisted nursery rhyme about prospective
infidelity, and Noble's last appearance, 'The Architect In Hell' switches
gears and is the most straight ahead track of the CD in a propulsive Bob
Mould way.
Kyle Crabtree keeps it brooding and sparse, repetitous and low strung, on the
intrumentals 'Haymaker' and 'Cock-A-Doodle-Doo', which ends with several
minutes of John Cage-ian radio music (not that it's single material, but I
think it beats 'Hey Jude' in length by a few seconds), and then turns this
approach on it's head on 'Wax Museum', which comes across like he's been
jamming with Link Wray all afternoon. 'Haunted on Foot', the sole vocal
contribution, is one paranoid run-on sentence. If there was a James dean in
The Shipping News, it would probably be Kyle.
Despite the extreme differences in approach, Three-Four shares a common
instrumental colour and emotional intensity, and still manages an overall
cohesion. This should no doubt have a revitilizing effect on the band (not
that they are desperately in need of one) for their next foray into
recording, unless they all like the solo aspect so much that they go and form
three Wings'. |