Customer Reviews

Regard the End

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

 

 

This is one album that I simply can't get off my CD player. I bought it after hearing a review of it on NPR, simply because I liked the sound of the snippets I heard there. The snippets were not misleading. The Willard Grant Conspiracy really doesn't sound too much like anyone, though at the same time you will sometimes hear echoes of other performers. If pressed to describe what they sound like, I'd say two parts Nick Cave (later, religious Nick Cave), one part Ry Cooder singing songs from the Baptist hymnal, and one part Martin Stephenson, with a measure of Tom Waits, Thin White Rope, and Tindersticks thrown in. The pace is always slow and deliberate, the mood sober, and the themes vaguely moral and religious and tragic. Singer Robert Fisher sounds a lot like Nick Cave and has a similar singing style and range.

The sound of the band is largely acoustic in feel, even when they use electric instruments. Fiddle plays a big role in the sound, as well as subdued keyboards and acoustic guitars. But, again, the resemblance to Nick Cave is palpable: the sound might be subdued, but it is never peaceful. Even behind the most placid melodies and vocals there is an edginess, as if something bad either has happened or is destined to happen.

I don't dislike any of the songs on this album, and I like several of them a lot, so much that I love several without being able to say which I like most. I'd be hard pressed to have to select between the traditional sounding "Another Man is Gone," the eerie "The Ghost of the Girl in the Well," the tragically true "The Suffering Song," "The Trials of Harrison Hayes," or the compelling "River in the Pines."

I like this band so much that I definitely am going to try and catch them when they next hit Chicago. Anyone liking any of the artists I compared them to above will definitely enjoy this stuffy. It is just first rate music.

I don't sense any of Harold Bloom's 'anxiety of influence', in the work of Willard Grant Conspiracy. Rather, Fisher has used the Nic Cave template to fashion and fathom a body of work of equal conviction and intensity: brooding soundscapes that resonate from some dark longing for the winter solstice to interminably delay its thawing. In some ways, the music over the eight years since I encountered 'Flying Low' can best be heard as a continuum. It's a salve to play them successively. Strangely, this most recent set,'Regard The End' with its prophetically cast title and songlist, suggests an unremitting focus on funereal concerns. Yet it's possibly the most joyous and peaceful of Fisher's works. This isn't to suggest that his music is a downer. There's an intimate warmth to his approach that guarantees engagement. The blend of old-timey material with freshly composed stuff is impeccable. You can't pick which is which. The sound bites from the field, the mimetic employment of mandolin, banjo, and guitar are thrilling, and the voices richly epressive. I confess to finding Fisher's output more expansive and uplifting than Cave's sibilant sound.

Just the title "Regard the End" sounds like a slogan or motto, forceful words charged with meaning. The Willard Grant Conspiracy, essentially Robert Fisher and a brace of co-conspirators, play a host of instruments including strings, horns, organs, pianos, and guitars, and both acoustic and electric. The songs sound layered and unrushed, even when the musicians pick up the tempo.

Fisher's lyrics tell those stories that we all recognize as we get older---and loss, grief, and death imbue celebrations, joy, and life with more depth and more meaning. All in all, a sobering but not depressing album.