Even tho I’m here, you know I’m already gone

Joseph Arthur: Our Shadows Will Remain

On the previous couple Joseph Arthur albums, the music, while scattered, has a certain pattern to it – quasi-religious, multi-tracked vocal self-harmonization of a distinctly odd sort, gothic country/blues-influenced, with a South American/Native American flavour to it, generally of a downbeat nature. Death songs with dusty texture.

Our Shadows Will Remain certainly retains some of that. The vocal style, while toned-down is still evident and distinctive. You still get the sun-baked expanse of the desert in the songs, although here, as suggested by the title, we enter a new phase of nuclear-scorched desert, something more technological than what came before. Death is still looming around every corner with alcohol, insanity, suicide, blame and self-loathing. What has changed is that these gospel-influenced revivalist songs are now accompanied by shiny, cheerful pop-rock.

As a starting point for Joseph Arthur, it’s probably ideal, but as someone who had been listening to him for a few years already, the style of Our Shadows Will Remain really threw me off, and it took a couple years to acclimatize to it. Now that I have, though, it’s glorious.

“In Ohio” starts with a buzzing, off-tune guitar strum, as Joseph Arthur sings, ‘In Ohio, you were born, in Ohio you will die alone.’ This inauspicious opening falls away with the syncopated beat and sunny, bouncy guitar and organ of “Can’t Exist” and is completely blown away when the fuzz is turned up high for the powerful chorus, still with an open, emotional message. That is the groundwork laid for this strange album. There is a new-wave influence that melds in strange, unexpected ways with the still-extant bits of blues and country that compose the skeletons of these songs. “Even Tho” floats in on a bed of ambient electronic sound then all at once, sleigh-bells, sharp guitar, and a vocal hook all come in, and it’s perfection. This is the song from which the album title is taken – ‘The world will make a dream and a prayer out of our bones to find where we belong, our shadows will remain even after we are gone.’

So despite the sheen of the music, the contemplative nature of the songs and the divine cast of the vocals are still the soul of the work.

76% => ***1/2

~ by jshopa on June 4, 2008.