Thursday, December 19, 2013

STN Top 50 Albums Of 2013: 14-13

14 Daughter - If You Leave
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
Cathartically heavy, gloomy atmospherically inclined female fronted bands seem two-a-penny these days; what Elena Tonra (and her two bandmates) have is a desperation and desolation really as two sides of the same coin. Tonra's adaptable vocals, leaning between angelically underplayed and stratospheric appealling to the fates and occasionally cracking under the strain, practically show off the emotional bruising. Beneath her guitars ripple across the icy atmosphere, the rushes of post-rock meeting shards of treated, broken riff before next time dropping into rhythmic folky fingerpicking. The listener might just feel emptied out themselves by the end, such is the detail implicit in the self-loathing that follows long dark nights of the romantic soul.


13 The Superman Revenge Squad Band - There Is Nothing More Frightening Than The Passage Of Time
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
Most don't realise it yet, but Ben Parker might be Britain's most acute sadsack of a lyricist. Delivery hanging on for dear life to the tune, Parker cuts a self-reflexive figure feeling lost amid the rush of modern life, hanging on to past pop culture, worked through metaphor and self-deprecation like life aids. Reworking some of his previous solo recordings and a few new songs with a full band, including his brother and Nosferatu D2 drumming octoped Adam, an oddly shaped broader palette that manages to be awkward and lush simultaneously brings out the longing and determination behind these extraordinarily rendered tales of bittersweet break-ups and personal disenfranchisement.


No comments: