This is a pretty old release now, but it’s also something I’ve been listening to pretty solidly for well over a year and I just need to get some words about it out of my system. The only ‘easy’ way to describe Vulture Feather is that it’s people from Wilderness, continuing, honing and improving the weird, wonderful sound they developed across three LPs (four if you count the unreleased one). If you haven’t heard Wilderness, and sadly I’d wager that most people haven’t, that presents a trickier issue. The old line dropped by many (myself included) was that Wilderness were like Lungfish by way of PiL: repetitious, meditative and yet slightly fraught at the edges, with megaphoned vocals and a bright-yet-bleary sound that spoke to the dubbier end of post-punk. Vulture Feather is this and yet is not this. The music seems wiser, somehow. As though, collectively, the band are now more knowing, and more fully aware of both themselves and the space in the universe that their music occupies. It booms and surges and reverberates, as though it was made to piped out in a place of worship. It’s thoughtful and introspective, but suggests infinite, universal truths. I love every note of it, and, to be honest, find it quite hard to be objective. I suggest you listen to the song ‘The Illusion Of Time’, because if that switches on an obscure little light in your brain that then you will likely enjoy the whole album as much as I do.
