Clear Horizon - s/t
(Kranky)
Clear Horizon is a supergroup of sorts. Kranky alumnus Jessica Bailiff made a name for herself with 3 records for Kranky, a 10" and a couple 7"s. Her fruitful collaboration with Low's Alan and Mimi Sparhawk helped to define her earlier records and didn't hurt for publicity as Low were enjoying an increased fan base as well. However, last year her most recent album came out, and it was stripped of the layers that had previously defined her music. Instead she was venturing into full sunlight, trading haziness for clarity and definition. So, it comes as a bit of a surprise that she would have been trading tapes through the mail with drift-folkster Dave Pearce (of Flying Saucer Attack fame). He is in a class of his own when it comes to creating hazy textures and fuzzy textures. Perhaps Jessica is more comfortable writing a song and having others help to fill it out with textures, which would explain why the textures were absent once the Sparhawk's weren't involved. In any case, Clear Horizon is the project that came about as a result of those tapes being sent back and forth between Jessica and Dave.
Much like Pinback sounds exactly like what anyone would imagine Three Mile
Pilot + Rob Crow would sound like, Clear Horizon sounds exactly like what you'd expect from pairing Jessica Bailiff and Flying Saucer Attack. Acoustic guitars and breathy vocals drenched in translucent sheets of ambience, feedback and fuzz. It seems as if the majority of the songwriting was done by Jessica, while Dave added most of the texture. The album's best track, "Millennium Blues," is the first time that Dave's vocals enter the mix.
From this song on, it's 1996 all over again. He sings again on "A Child's
Eye," but the music isn't quite as good. Jessica's singing contributions are also good, particularly on "Distortion Song," which sounds as if it were largely recorded by Dave, and Jessica just sang over it. Closing out the album are two tracks, "Dusk" and "Open Road," which define the two poles of this record. "Dusk" is classic FSA: feedback and droning tones over 7:22 of blessed-out and awesome ambience. "Open Road" begins similarly, but a fairly driving drumbeat comes in and gels the drone into a focused and almost poppy song.
While I would have preferred if this were just a Flying Saucer Attack record, or at least that Dave sang and wrote more of the acoustic guitar parts, I'm happy to have anything with him contributing his unmatched ambience to an album. Word has it that these two are planning on getting together to record another album, which will hopefully help to permanently draw Dave from his recent silence.
|
