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Philadelphia singer Daughn Gibson was once a truck driver. It’s a biographical detail that informs All Hell’s odd brew of country croon, plinking saloon piano, evangelist Christian interludes and tales of good families gone bad: a patchwork of influences you could probably only encounter zig-zagging across interstates from sea to shining sea, probably on the radio, probably late at night.
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Justin Broadrick (JK Flesh) has loomed large in metal for 20 years because of his disregard for its orthodoxies and his equal parts beautiful and brutal music. Raised in a Birmingham council estate, by age 16 Broadrick was guitarist in seminal grindcore band Napalm Death and three years later (in 1988) he formed Godflesh, a hugely influential industrial metal duo. Godflesh put growling, distorted vocals and repetitive, down-tuned guitar into the smelter with lead-heavy beats from a drum machine, forging songs with an inexplicable groove.
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Photos of The Walkmen’s wives and small children decorate Heaven’s sleeve design. It’s no pastiche of happy snaps; it’s an exercise in branding. But why does something so normal look so strange? It’s because when The Walkmen flaunt their happy domesticity, they break rock & roll mythmaking rule #1: don’t seem traditional. Furthermore, their trademark tension has melted away. You could play Heaven while the baby sleeps.
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When The Church’s Steve Kilbey sings, a vein of Australian music history is pierced and out bleeds nostalgia, warm and familiar. On this second collaboration between Kilbey and American songwriter and guitarist Jeffery Cain, Kilbey’s idiosyncratic ‘talk-sing’ sounds better than ever before. Cain skillfully layers strings, guitar, percussion and ambient noise to hypnotic, evocative effect. ‘The Privateer’ opens the record with a muted cacophony of chatter, colour and confusion before a sad and simple violin sweeps it all away. Meanwhile, anyone who’s ever loved a boozer will feel the particular pain of it spilling from ‘Old Black Spirit’. The noir-rock of Dimmer is an obvious parallel, though on ‘Just Dust’ Isidore dives into swampier depths a la Kim Salmon.
Listen: www.soundisidore.com
