Customer Reviews

Mouth By Mouth

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

His Name Is Alive reached a peak with this album, fulfilling the promise of their two previous albums, and setting the stage for what was to follow.

This album is recommended for people who enjoy a variety of underground rock styles, as it ranges wide. It has shoegazer guitar squalls, gentle folk-like songs, a rockabilly-styled instrumental, a song backed by cellos, and a cover of Big Star's "Blue Moon" which is almost Enya-esque, all supporting haunting, ethereal female vocals. In spite of the adventurous musical approaches, the songs are always melodic, and there is a continuity in spite of the shifting styles.

While it might be hyperbole to claim this is an unheralded "Sgt. Pepper's" of underground rock, in my opinion that's not far off the mark.

Of all the 'His Name Is Alive' albums, I have two favourites and this, their 3rd release, is one of them. There's so much variation from track to track, its hard to pick out any coherent theme running through the album, except that its clearly been put together by people with a pretty oddball or unhinged view of things.

Sound-wise, I've always liked the sound of electric guitars in distress: amped and overdriven to distortion (rather like Neil Young/Crazy Horse & Bill Frisell). 'His Name Is Alive's prime mover is Warren Defever, who has great taste in sensitive acoustic guitar plucking, feedbacking guitar outbursts and loops/samples, sometimes using all three in the one song. Here & there there's a string section to provide contrast and a considerable amount of sadness to the quieter songs. Principal vocalist Karin Oliver is less strident now than on the debut album & sounds more like she's singing 'to' you, rather than 'at' you.

The lyrics are a little oblique, though rascism, sexual desire, relationships (both good & bad) and drowning appear. I've wondered before whether the tracks "Cornfield"; "In Every Ford" and "Lord Make Me a Channel of Your Peace" are some form of comment on US Southern States conservative values, though I am aware that's a pretty big brush I'm tarring an awful lot of people with.

The tracks "Drink, Dress and Ink" and "Can't Go Wrong Without You" feature some bizarre effects - the first sounds like Johnny Marr's guitar from The Smiths "How Soon is Now?" but chopped-up much faster, like a motorbike and scary with it; the second sounds just creepy, whereas "Jackrabbits" sounds like 1960's surf-pop from the Beach Boys era. "Sick" is preceded by a brief sample of a sobbing woman threatened with the insane asylum, before carrying on with a stop/start mixture of loud electric guitar & ethnic woodwind. "Lemon Yellow" is the sound of someone likening being happy to sailing on a yellow sea. "Ear" is the story of Van Gogh's self-mutilation set to music. "The Dirt Eaters" is just a brilliant song with a Jack Nicholson sample at the beginning.

I've kept playing this album for years & don't think I will ever get bored with it. It's also a good place to start for newcomers to 'His Name Is Alive' - hence 5 stars.

This maybe my favorite album by HNIA.

Defever has taken the ethereal soundscapes and folk interludes from "HIIYH" and gathers them together into actual, danceable, dreampop-ish songs!

I feel that he has stayed true to his original vision, but organized in a way that is more accessible than before. (and more listenable).

plus, great album cover by V23...

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR BEGINNERS

along with

"Stars on ESP"

and

"Ft. Lake"

more warren & karin .... as always, a wildly unpredictable gumbo of music, beautiful & disjointed. This is the soundtrack to lying on a blanket & looking at stars. It follows in the same vein as home is in your head, only slightly more structured. If you like beautiful, floating music, daring music, if you have wanted something different & challenging ... and yet strangely soothing ... i can't recommend this album, or ANYTHING by HNIA, enough.

previous albums by HNIA were faint and bleary-eyed musical sketches that revealed a haunting dream world full of mystery and gorgeously ethereal soundscapes. there was enough ghostly and beautiful sounds on those albums that i had to actually wonder what kind of amazing place Michigan must be! haha

on Mouth By Mouth, His Name Is Alive throw a little bit of a curveball and present an album of real honest-to-goodness songs. sure, there had been plenty of pop moments on their other albums, but nothing like this display of songwriting. Mouth By Mouth sounds like a real band effort and the results are nothing short of stunning. the songs still capture that ethereal and haunting essence that makes this band so unique and special. but most of the dark overtones are tossed in favour of a brighter sonic palette. this album remained in my cd player for years and received almost non-stop play resulting in Mouth By Mouth being one of the few cd's in my collection that is so worn down that i need to purchase it once again. that says something for the timeless and beautiful music contained within.

Warren Defever stated in one interview that he wrote the songs for MOUTH BY MOUTH after realizing that people were going to actually listen to them. So, gone is the introversion and teenage angst of LIVONIA and HOME IS IN YOUR HEAD, but the idiosyncracies have just begun.

His Name is Alive's body of work carries the same mood and feel over several different musical styles, and the jump from the dreary and oppressive HOME IS IN YOUR HEAD to the friendly pop of MxM is the widest in Warren Defever's 15 years of working under His Name is Alive. It was with MxM that HNIA finally became a "real band," and with Trey Many, HNIA had a dedicated drummer that was actually in most of the songs.

MxM, however, is not totally a His Name is Alive record. About half of the songs were written for Melissa Eliot's band The Dirt Eaters, who is for the most part the same people as His Name is Alive. Melissa and Warren's songs, however, share a common weirdness that makes the record a unified whole.

The highlights include "Lip," "Cornfield," and the haunting "Sort Of." HNIA's cover of Chilton's "Blue Moon" is pleasant, but I can't help but feel that a Warren-written song in its place would have been better.

Warren and Melissa get literary in this album, "Sort Of" is taken from a passage by William Faulker. Several other songs include lines from the poetry of Theodore Roethke.

In the end, however, MxM deserves three stars. Warren made too many compromises in this one, and it turned out for the worse. Even though he continued to collaborate with others in the albums after MxM, at least then he kept control and sustained that standard Warren inexplicable creativity. This may be HNIA's worst album, and I think it should wait until you have already heard the sweeping wonder of LIVONIA or the oldie-robot-funk of FT. LAKE.

NOTE: the import (UK) edition of MOUTH BY MOUTH contains one song not found in the US version: "The Homesick Waltz." This track, belonging to the same period of composition as "Library Girl," is a beautiful and dark loop of samples and guitar. Paying extra for this UK import version is worth it to get this "waltz."