Customer Reviews

Gentle Creatures

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I first heard Tarnation's 1995 album GENTLE CREATURES when I was a passionate fan of the 4AD and ready to buy anything that record label released. And I'm truly grateful to that label, since I otherwise may have never heard this remarkable effort. GENTTLE CREATURES, the band's first major release, features songs in an early country music vein (termed "Southern Gothic" by some) with bleak lyrics of tragic love and despair sung by Paula Frazer. I grew up surrounded only by latter-day country music, the glitzy commercial sound pioneered by Nashville, which is generally so trite and vapid, but the purity of Tarnation's music shows that the country genre can have great power.

Several of the tracks here were recorded at the home studio of Warren Defever of His Name Is Alive fame, and the album does benefit from Defever's touch, as the low-fi filtering of songs like "Big O Motel" or the surf-rock production of "The Hand" (remarkably similar to Defever's own STARS ON E.S.P. album) make them all the more hard-hitting. (Defever's bizarre recording regiment, which reportedly including having everyone sleep in bunks, led to such great stress that this lineup broke up right after the sessions.) The instrumental track "Gentle Creatures" is startling in the context of the album, for its repetitive line and ambient vocals take the sound far behind any mid-century Southern lament. And indeed, this album might not be as successful were there not clear links to the 1990s indie scene -- this is not any kind of slavish revival of Patsy Cline, but an integration of country's possibilities with the music of today.

I've loved this album over the years, and the bulk of the album moves me the same way as my first exposure to it over a decade ago. However, I can't award it an unqualified recommendation. The couple of songs not written by Paula Frazer are so much weaker than the rest, and I've never felt compelled to go on to Tarnation's second album MIRADOR or Paula Frazer's solo work which suggests the highs here aren't as high as one might think. Still, GENTLE CREATURES is generally a lovely reverie, and I continue to pull it down from the shelves quite often.

just as i said, this album will never grow old, will never sound outdated, will never lessen in beauty. gorgeous vocals, beautiful guitar work, fresh & poetic lyrics. inexpressably beautiful.