Labels: Southern
Review by: Alex Deller
What I’d heard previously by the 90 Day Men had led me to suspect this’d be some more top-hole post-hardcore-cum-indie- rock tomfoolery that would be a pleasant enough way to while away minutes of my rather drab life. Not so! The creature has evolved! Under the rug with ye, Albini-esque shudders! To the back of the closet squawking discords! Instead of the well-manicured, politely noisy compositions of yore, the 90 Day Men have taken a mature, graceful approach that soothes the ears and makes the heart ache.
The title track eases it’s way into your boudoir with a grandiose piano flourish and some sultry vocals that could have crept from the lips of Greg Dulli, the husky-voiced sextalker who manned the Afghan Whigs. And when it’s four and a half minutes are up there’s not a dry crotch in the house.
“Harlequin’s Chassis’ is a similarly quiet affair, another brooding piano piece centre-stage amongst pretty guitars and atmospheric choral vocals that rise and fall with the music’s ebb. Similar in a way to what Mogwai have been doing for the last couple of albums.
To end it all we have “Eyes in the Road’, a soft instrumental whose subliminal sounds are barely present, just a trickle of piano amid stifled drums and a murmur of electronic washes.
The journey is a pleasing one, despite the lack of time it takes. Whether a full-album of such sounds could sustain the interest is, at this moment, a matter for conjecture. But while it lasts I’m happy to snatch at this brief fulfillment.