Bell Orchestre – As Seen Through Windows

The most-mentioned fact about Bell Orchestre is that of their connection with their better-known peers from Montreal, Arcade Fire. The links between the two bands go deeper than just the happenstance of sharing a city of origin, with the two bands also sharing several personnel: full-time members Sarah Neufeld (bass) and Richard Parry (violin) and part time member Pietro Amato, on the french horn with which this album is suffused.This, their second album (the first being 2005’s Recording A Tape The Colour of Light) showcases a somewhat different musical direction to the better-known band. Most obviously, the nine tracks here are completely without lyrics, so it is through the instrumentation and track titles alone that the listener can uncover meaning and perhaps narrative.The album starts exuberantly, with the opening bars of first track ‘Stripes’ sounding like the orchestra tuning up, collecting themselves, before launching into an enjoyable, upbeat introduction, with sustained horn notes and busy strings and percussion running along underneath. This is followed, on ‘Elephants’ by a more downbeat mood, with the brass here perhaps imitating the elephant’s mournful trumpeting. This highly atmospheric (and lengthy, at nearly 9 minutes) track is perhaps one of the album’s highlights, evoking animals in the mist, fogbound seagulls shrieking over an incoming tide with a sense of drama ”“ as the dynamics rise and fall - as well as sadness. High, almost strident, strings and mellow french horn punctuate the mood, all combining to make a track that is as listenable as it is detailed, complex and musically intelligent.‘Water/Light/Shifts’ again reflects its title by creating a sound redolent of running water catching the light as it opens, all twinkles and chimes; and ”“ pleasingly ”“ ‘Bucephalus Bouncing Ball’ indeed has a slower-then-speeding-up beat that evokes the bouncing of a ball, in amongst the enjoyable kitchen-sink-and-all multiplicity of other percussive elements, synths, and rather oriental / eastern sounding strings.Elsewhere, as on the title track, the sound is somehow more traditionally arranged or orchestral, with its harmoniously combined brass elements and tuneful violins. This is post-rock that is much more at the classical than the rock end of the spectrum, and it is these tracks that hold rather less sustained interest. Indeed, they could be said to support the view that much of the music here is, in fact, little more than “incidental” music. Beautifully played and arranged incidental music, indeed, but just, I felt, lacking that indefinable something (is it emotional heft? an overarching mood or theme? meaning?) that would allow it to jump the next step up into something of more deep and lasting satisfaction.Bell Orchestre on Myspace