Black Heart Procession - Amore Del Tropico
(Touch and Go)
I think we can all agree that the penultimate scene in The Royal Tenenbaums comes when Richie, after finding out that Margot and Eli, perhaps the two most important people in the world to him, are sleeping together, decides to kill himself. In what must be the most intense moment in Wes Anderson's canon, Richie stares at himself in the bathroom mirror, then commences to cut off all of his hair and shave his beard. Then, without hesitation, he says, "I'm going to kill myself tomorrow," before slitting his wrists. This is all accompanied by Elliott Smith's overwrought "Needle in the Hay," which certainly adds to the morbidity of it all. Afterward, in the hospital, Richie's brother Chas asks if he wrote a suicide note. Richie responds, "Yes, once I regained consciousness." This has always summed up the Black Heart's music for me—it's incredibly intense, morbid, depressing (insert synonym here, please) music, but it retains a certain degree of tongue in cheek playfulness—they know how their music sounds, and they're able to play with it in its own scope. I mean, "On Ships of Gold" is a great song, but doesn't it seem to be a bit... overly dramatic? The Black Heart Procession knows this, and they carry it on for eight minutes to prove it.
Which is why Amore Del Tropico strikes me as such an odd release. Basically, it's a concept album about a murder in a small town (the Tropics of Love?) and the grizzled detective who comes to investigate. While this shares some similarities with their other records (for instance, I'm pretty sure 2 is about a loved one dying, and I know that Three is about going off to war and getting yourself killed), there are a lot of differences. For instance, they've all but abandoned their insanely-catchy-yet-crushing dirges, opting instead for a wide variety of sounds, from mariachi to bossa nova pop to alt-country-ish ballad to slowcore to dub-flavoured ballad-pop back to their traditional sound. Also abandoned is the numerical constancy; this one's got an actual title (although on the back of the CD tray "4" is written in red). Also abandoned is the scary horse-man playing trumpet. What was that all about, anyway?
These differences, on a whole, provide a refreshing change of pace, and a nice reprieve for those of us getting tired of the sameness that was starting to present itself. For instance, on the album standout, "Broken World," we're treated to an almost hip hop beat (sounding strangely like the beat used in Hayden's "The Hazards of Sitting Beneath Palm Trees") before the song itself kicks in—a wistful mariachi pop song with some of the Black Heart Procession's saddest lyrics—not overly depressing, just very, very wistful and melancholy. Likewise, the album's English equivalent title track provides some very good pop.
On the other side of this, some of the album fails for this very reason. "A Cry for Love" and "Did You Wonder" are both fairly stagnant, failures on an otherwise likeable album. However, on the whole, Amore Del Tropico is a welcome change from a band who was in danger of becoming a real one-trick-pony. So, there you go. Get this if you like Black Heart; if not, still get it, because it's pretty darn sweet.
|
