Albums don’t usually grow on me: My first listen tells me most of what I need to know.
While an initial run through of Smother left me content, it didn’t knock me over. It wasn’t until listen four, on song No. 5 “Plaything” when Smother became pyrophoric. Somewhere among Hayden Thorpe’s lilting vocal, stirring lyrics (New squeeze, take off your chemise/And I’ll do as I please/l know, I’m not any kind of heartthrob), and the band’s inventive electronic pings merged with subtle African drum, the album ignited in my iTunes.
Smother is a monster built for a quiet room — it never rises to a bluster yet is packed with a wealth of tonal ingenuity. It pushes and pulls, taking the listener on an emotive wave (much like a film score) ranging between tension and utter joy.
The journey starts with the taut “Lion’s Share,” a haunting mix of somber piano against a restless, thumping background. Thorpe’s voice is dramatic and sinister, but the moment the song becomes overwrought, it drifts happily into “Bed of Nails.” “Nails” is dreamy and light even while referencing Shakespeare’s Ophelia and Shelley’s Frankenstein (and odd, though fitting pair), but what’s remarkable is the shift the band has made in the space of one song. There are songs of rising crescendos (“Invisible,” “Albatross”) and understated elegance (“Loop The Loop”) punctuated with Thorpe’s falsetto met ably by bassist Tom Fleming, who can croon himself.
The album’s best song is its last, as the lovely “End Come Too Soon” could swell past its seven and a half minutes. There’s a sense the band knows it’s done special work and wishes to linger, as Thorpe repeatedly pleads “it’s too soon/it’s too soon” as the album closes.
I concur.
