Aereogramme - A Story in White
(Matador)
How do most people react to the frailties of their own existence? Do they retreat into a mental cocoon, building walls between themselves and reality? Do they choose to ignore the issue entirely and suppress their own humanity? Well, if you are Craig B of Aereogramme, you react with pure, utter rage. You lash out at the world, at God, at everything that makes humanity seem so trivial. It is this rage, expressed through explosions of heavy metal guitar riffs coming up and out through serene fields of sound--Craig B's boyish voice quickly turning into a pained scream--that give Aereogramme its sound.
The description of Aereogramme's sound might make it seem formulaic, like another version of fellow Scots Mogwai or Hopelanders Sigur Ros. However, in Aereogramme's music, these explosions in sound and shifts between soft and MOTHER FUCKING LOUD always have a direct connection to the lyrics and the meaning of the song. Aereogramme's first full length, A Story in White, is not just another post-rock album, but instead a tour through one man's anxieties, each explosion in sound done not simply for mood but to relate to the listener this one man's pain. The rage of A Story in White is so personal and so full of vitriol, that it is reminiscent of Nirvana's In Utero, when Kurt Cobain reacted to his ailments, his fatherhood, and his celebrity with similarly pure and unfettered disdain.
Each song on the album seems to delve deep into Craig B's mind. In "Post-Tour, Pre-Judgement," he reveals "in a way, without hate, I wouldn't be what I am." This revelation is expressed musically by a huge swell of loud but beautiful tones, the hard but not quite metallic guitars chugging away against a beautiful, gleaming sheen of organ-sounding keyboards. After two heart-stopping swells, the song quiets down and changes focus, as Craig B finds someone--something--to blame, saying, "I pray to something else." This shift is accompanied by a fiercer, grating metal guitar part that slashes out a couple measures to end the song. In just this one song, we are given such a vivid picture of the inner workings of the singer's mind; it can seem schizophrenic, for sure, but not unstably so. It is just a brutal, vivid account of what we all at some times feel.
Craig B left Ganger shortly before their first US tour in order to concentrate on Aereogramme, and perhaps we should hold that against him because Ganger never seemed to recover after he left. However, based on early singles, it would be impossible to guess that Aereogramme would sound like this and turn out this good. Combining the song structure of Sigur Ros with the anger and emotion of Nirvana and much use of a Chavez-like heavy metal guitar sound, A Story in White is a powerful, personal album.
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