7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A winter moon, December 23, 2004
This review is from: Black Holes in the Sand (Audio CD)
"In the small hours I realize/what I have done," Nick Talbot sings huskily at the start of Gravenhurst's "Black Holes in the Sand." He pretty much is the heart of Gravenhurst, actually. With his darkly reflective lyrics and experimental edge, he sounds like a playfully morbid guy just stretching out his talents.
It opens with the title track, which would sound like an ordinary folk song if it weren't so eerie. Omnichord adds a spacier note to Talbot's guitar strumming, and after his dreamlike singing, the song blossoms into a semi-gothic tapestry of sound. It's pretty gorgeous.
The following songs seem to be attempting to be ordinary folk songs, but none of them quite succeed in being ordinary. Only the Husker Du's "Diane" comes across as a pure folk song, and that's until you hear the creepy (murder/rape) lyrics. The other songs are laced with slightly offbeat melodies, eerie sound effects, and the chilly distance of "Winter Moon."
Talbot seems to be pushing the boundaries of what is usually considered folk music. Good for him, even if the results are sometimes disturbing. He sounds like the more morbid brother of Badly Drawn Boy, tinkering with typical music styles and churning out some truly beautiful songwriting.
Talbot's more morbid side comes out in "Flowers in her Hair," the story of a witch who returns to haunt the people who killed her. "Still Water" is a rambling look at ancient civilizations, with only ruins left. Even the most upbeat song has "outside the winter moon shines down/through branches of needle trees rake the black sky like leaves/and the stars are silent." And the only thing that keeps all of this from sounding as disturbing as it should is that he has a lovely, smooth voice.
Talbot also plays a good acoustic guitar, which grounds his creepy, ghostly songs. To shake things up, he includes cello and omnichord, played by Jeffrey Alexander and Miram Goldberg, as well as a tangle of tambourines and a sort of distorted Telecaster sound. And is that an organ?
Gravenhurst's follow-up to "Flashlight Seasons" is a beautifully dark chunk of psychedelic folk -- definitely worth checking out. Just don't listen to "Diane" when it's dark out.
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