Albums don’t usually grow on me: My first listen tells me most of what I need to know.<\/p>\n
While an initial run through of Smother left me content, it didn\u2019t knock me over. It wasn\u2019t until listen four, on song No. 5 \u201cPlaything\u201d when Smother became pyrophoric. Somewhere among Hayden Thorpe\u2019s lilting vocal, stirring lyrics (New squeeze, take off your chemise\/And I\u2019ll do as I please\/l know, I\u2019m not any kind of heartthrob), and the band\u2019s inventive electronic pings merged with subtle African drum, the album ignited in my iTunes.<\/p>\n
Smother is a monster built for a quiet room \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
The journey starts with the taut \u201cLion\u2019s Share,\u201d a haunting mix of somber piano against a restless, thumping background. Thorpe\u2019s voice is dramatic and sinister, but the moment the song becomes overwrought, it drifts happily into \u201cBed of Nails.\u201d \u201cNails\u201d is dreamy and light even while referencing Shakespeare\u2019s Ophelia and Shelley\u2019s Frankenstein (and odd, though fitting pair), but what\u2019s remarkable is the shift the band has made in the space of one song. There are songs of rising crescendos (\u201cInvisible,\u201d \u201cAlbatross\u201d) and understated elegance (\u201cLoop The Loop\u201d) punctuated with Thorpe\u2019s falsetto met ably by bassist Tom Fleming, who can croon himself.<\/p>\n
The album\u2019s best song is its last, as the lovely \u201cEnd Come Too Soon\u201d could swell past its seven and a half minutes. There\u2019s a sense the band knows it\u2019s done special work and wishes to linger, as Thorpe repeatedly pleads \u201cit\u2019s too soon\/it\u2019s too soon\u201d as the album closes.<\/p>\n
I concur.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u2019t knock me over. It wasn\u2019t until listen four, on song No. 5 \u201cPlaything\u201d when Smother became pyrophoric. Somewhere among Hayden Thorpe\u2019s lilting vocal, stirring lyrics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1473,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[467,466],"class_list":["post-1472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-smother","tag-wild-beasts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1472"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1474,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472\/revisions\/1474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}