Lumen - The Man Felt an Iron Hand Grasp Him by the Hair, at the Nape. Not One Hand, a Hundred Hands Seized Him, Each by the Hair, and Tore Him Head to Foot, the Way You Tear Up a Sheet of Paper, Into Hundreds of Little Pieces
(Temporary Residence)
Lumen are, in the order they appear, acoustic guitar, organ, bass, and
drums, and they play tricky, yet ponderous mid-tempo numbers that
occasionally build to exultant climaxes. The band is comprised,
in part, of former members of Tarentel and A Minor Forest, and
their record is released by Temporary Residence, whose promotional
materials for Lumen use words like "metal ballad" and "Yes."
Granted, there are elements of the power ballad in the build-to-climax
portions of the songs, but I was thinking more along the lines of Rush,
particularly their more folksy moments like A Farewell to Kings,
and Jethro Tull's over-intellectualized folk-rock epic \Minstrel in
the Gallery. Although, really, more than anything, it sounds like
A Minor Forest, sans screaming, with acoustic instead of electric
guitars, and organ/accordion instead of cello.
At first I thought this was just all too pretentious because the songs
are so heavy (heavy, like bummer, not heavy like metal), and, after all,
it is on Temporary Residence, the humorless label. However, it's got a
guy from A Minor Forest, whose Flemish Altruism record, along
with dropping some heavy (like metal, not bummer) hitters, has some
really funny song titles (plus I saw them once to a really lousy cover
of Metallica's "Master of Puppets," which was hilarious). But given the
unwieldy title, the fact that they didn't title any songs but refer to
them as "I-VIII," and are from San Francisco, the humorless city, in the
end it just comes across as really arty-farty.
Things get kind of interesting on "IV," where the drums are way up in the
mix and the guitar plays a cool circular melody and is processed to sound
like it's inside of a weird swimming pool. The drums really are the best
part of this record, while the guitar parts are the sort of hollow, showy
kind of crap that aging heshers checking out Guilds at Guitar Center on
Sunset Boulevard would love and tell all their buddies about at the
Guitar Institute of Technology. If they cranked this stuff on some
cheap, super loud guitars, maybe they could have passed for Don Cabellero,
but without that band's guts or power.
This record would have been better if they had a dude singing about
ancient stuff, like dragons and wizards, and maybe a song about a mystical
adventure in space, with all kinds of thought provoking philosophical
themes. If you are embarrassed about your lingering secret love for
prog-rock concept albums, then maybe this is the record for you. You
get an updated version of the music with indie cred. Really, though,
you should just get over yourself and go buy all those Boston records
again because at least they were fun to listen to.
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