“Here’s a band that are now adept, virtuoso in fact, at playing silence. It’s always seemed that it’s in the spaces between the notes that they were saying the most.” – Dara Higgins finds life on Earth‘s new album.
It took the earth a billion years before it was able to sustain life. That seems like a long time. About as long as it takes Earth, the popular rock music group, to get to the point. But that’s the point of Earth, there is no point. Earth have always been as much about the space between the notes, than the actual notes themselves. Here’s a band that are now adept, virtuoso in fact, at playing silence. It’s always seemed that it’s in the spaces between the notes that they were saying the most.
Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light II, recorded at the same time as AoDDoL I, picks up where the last record left off with Sigil of Brass, slowly plucked notes, mutterings of cello, washes of cymbals. Not much else, but the soft ebb of a decaying note. The cello provides the rhythm for And His Teeth Did Brightly Shine, and guitars meander around on top, Richard Thompson on Calvary Cross style perhaps, augmented by the odd rattle. Space is suddenly at a premium. A Multitude Of Doors has a busy cello, Lori Goldston , once of Nirvana, free forming liquid lines across the background, never letting you settle. The Coroscene Dog is almost jaunty, but not quite, where as The Rakehell takes what amounts to a blues riff, and twists it over twelve minutes.
Although the pace rarely, if ever, musters the energy to get up to a shuffle, the over all impression is almost of a kind of lightness or optimism. Earth will still take one idea, and draw it out, slowly and painstakingly, for as long as it seems it can take it. This time the ideas themselves seem slightly more involved, complex, by Earth standards. At times, as the band play, it sounds like Crazy Horse after they came across a stash of Ketamine, which is to say that Earth almost swagger about this record. It’s taken a billion years, but there is life on Earth, just in time for the inevitable apocalypse.
Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light II will be released by Southern Lord on February 14th. Earth play The Button Factory on March 5th.
