Red Sparowes | ‘The Fear is Excruciating But Therein lies the Answer’

When instrumental post rock is good, it absolutely soars. When it’s not, it’s about as boring as watching a really boring coloured paint (let’s say ‘Slate Grey’) dry. It is hellish stuff, and calls for any CD’s that contain it to be launched out of a cannon and into the sun are not without merit.

Red Sparowes happily hit the former with their very first release, ‘At the Soundless Dawn’, an album that came out of nowhere in 2005 and presented a beautifully composed soundtrack to dawn breaking over an urban landscape.

Shimmering, subtle and not without moments of fiery power, it was perfect for waking up to on those early morning commutes.  These days, Bryand Clifford Meyer of ISIS fame leads the group, with the departure Josh Graham a couple of years ago to focus on A Storm of Light.

Sadly, the long-winded title of ‘The Fear is Excruciating, But Therein lies The Answer’ does not bode well for its contents.

Part of the issue is the album simply meanders. This style has a tendency to simply wander off into endless noodling if not tightly reined in, and the opening track proper, ‘In Illusion of Order’ just sort of drifts by with few memorable features.

I must have listened to it at least seven times by now and I can’t recall anything about it.  That being said, things improve considerably once ‘A Hail of Bombs’ rears its head, playing on a powerful hook and bouncing along with likable power. The only other distraction is ‘A Mutiny’, which diverts attention with its odd slide-guitar passages.

At times, it’s just hard to retain focus on what’s actually going on in ‘The Fear…’. A clear, strong mix is present, but it seems the album is without theme, simplying circling around with no serious grabbing points.

That hallmark of post-rock, the cresendo, is very much present, but there’s a sense of it just not being up to scratch. Something like the last Mogwai album showcases how to work this sort of thing perfectly, but active attention is required here.

Inoffensive but still listenable, the ever shifting line-up of the group may have had something to do with how this turned out. Still a colorful live act, Red Sparowes can and hopefully will do better than this in the future.

2.7 / 5 - Lorcan Archer :: 25/07/10