Customer Reviews

Insularia

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With this new release, Seattle's F&D move firmly into Cowboy Junkies/Mazzy Star phantasmorgic rural neighborhood. Dilapidated barns, the lonesome baying of a coyote, dust devils, blue-silver moonlight describing a weathervane...we're all familiar with the architecture. Dara Rosewasser's voice starts out the first track, with a cathedral-pure soprano, leading you to believe this will be a churchy, madrigal-type number. But after her solemn opening, a guitar whines, and up starts the backing band, muted and blurring (with gossamer-thin tendrils) the difference between country, blues and goth. "Insularia" is a great *album*, a vast improvement over the 'collection of songs' feel of their previous work. Each piece has its place and unfolds perfectly. The two covers -- "I come and stand at every door" and "Witches" perfectly complement and aid the theme of unresolved longing and lost. Rosewasser's voice has become a formidable instrument. Imagine Natalie Merchant vectored in the direction Ann Halsam (Renaissance). The perfect soundtrack to a Cormac McCarthy novel.

This, the fourth and finest CD from Seattle's Faith & Disease, is truly a disarmingly beautiful accomplishment. Insularia is a stunning exercise in subtlety, creating, by turns, an atmosphere of brooding resignation and a wistful sense of detachment. Though there's not a bad track on the disc, three or four really shine, showcasing Dara Rosenwasser's lilting vocals and the band's distinctly nondigital, almost folky approach to goth: songs like the baroque "Perhaps...Persephone," the somnolent "Marie Don't Sleep In Your Makeup," and a gorgeous a cappella cover of This Mortal Coil's "I Come and Stand At Every Door." Faith & Disease employ solid guitar work and an exotic array of percusive instruments (Tibetan bell-drilbu, djembe, gong, dombec, and clave) to deliver a simple, sincere, and soft-spoken melancholy, which, considering the sometimes overproduced and exaggeratedly melodramatic efforts of darkwave and ethereal artists, is very refreshing indeed.

Did you ever experiment these sacred and rare seconds in life when everything appear to work fine whatever you do, when thoughts naturally connect to events in a beautiful....dream?

Then you probably want to listen to Dara's powerful spring like voice, so well supported by Eric's bass.

Faith & Disease take you away into pure depths where you do not only contemplate their feelings but also yours; in this sense they highly interact with people listening to them in a ceremonious experience.

Not pretending to teach, they just install a magic halo in the heart of which you just see the best of yourself.

I believe they do not know how beautiful they are.

"Insularia" is a good way to discover them if you don't have the chance to see them live. Check out their other CD's.

Have fun;

Yazel Boudour

Insularia is one of my very favourite CDs.. Faith And Disease are talented musicians and very cool people at the same time. If you ever get a chance to meet them at one of their live performances I'm sure you will feel the same. It's worth seeing them live because unlike most other bands their music is actually moving. I can't wait untill their next cd comes out.