The Silent Years – The Globe

This is quite a strange one. The accompanying PR blurb (which I always conscientiously refrain from reading until after I’ve formed my own opinion of the release in question, thankyouverymuch) tells me that this album from The Silent Years is meant to be a concept album. Although what the specific concept in question is, remains unclear. It also references a quite diverse range of references and influences, most of which flatter the band unduly, and so would probably be misleading or unhelpful to quote here.The Globe, then, first outing for the band’s re-configured line up (around frontman and lynchpin Josh Epstein), is ”“ as I see it ”“ a quite disorientating, unfocussed and stylistically varied album, and one that suffers from it. A fair few tracks, like ‘Out Into The Wild’, ‘Know Your Place’, ‘The World’s Worst Birthday Gift’, ‘Aging Gracefully’, ‘Taking Drugs At The Amusement Park’ and ‘TV > BJ’ can best be described as “epic” both in their ambition and sense of drama. This can sometimes frustrate, as there is a sense that a lot of angst and emotion is going into making the music, without actually resulting in any clear sense, for the listener, of what the emotion in question might be, or indeed what the angst might be actually about.Other tracks, in marked contrast, are very low-key, acoustic and sensitive-singer-songwriterly. ‘On Our Way Home’ is positively Coldplay-esque ”“ all unplugged guitar, violin, and Chris-Martin-alike vocal (including that “skipping-up-an-octave jump” trick as featured in ‘Yellow’, etc), while ‘Black Hole’, ‘The Sun Is Alive’ and ‘The Axiom’ are most closely aligned to alt-country, with ‘The Axiom’ in particular bringing to mind a less well-read Richmond Fontaine, whilst ‘The Sun Is Alive’ is a track so pastoral that it starts with birdsong.Often, a song changes course in the middle, which adds to the general sense of confusion already caused by the variety in styles between different songs. This happens with ‘Out Into The Wild’: the opening track here setting the tone of what is to come, and they do something similar on ‘Black Hole’, a pretty strange track juxtaposing a jaunty acoustic feel with quite intense lyrics about “heroin malaise” and witnessing “someone drowning in the crystal waters of Lake Michigan”, punctuated by jarring synth breaks and the occasional “da-da-da” (as also deployed in the similarly drug-referencing ‘Taking Drugs At The Amusement Park’).It is hard to identify much of a theme, lyrically (despite the “concept album” claims). A couple of the tracks point to a feeling of alienation: ‘Know Your Place’ sings of feeling that “Your nearest neighbours still feel like they’re light years away”, and ‘Open Up Our Eyes’ claims “I’ll walk these streets alone / Cos I don’t need anyone”. Otherwise, it’s all a kind of vague sense of generalised drama of which it is difficult to take much of an overview.Individual tracks are enjoyable: in particular I would recommend giving ‘On Our Way Home’, ‘Ropes’ (whose percussive sound will ring more than a few bells with any Dodos fans listening), ‘The Axiom’ and the orchestral-turned-glitch enjoyable oddness of ‘Madame Shocking’.Ultimately, though, this is probably a release that frustrates and confounds as much as it intrigues and inspires. A bit more of a concept for the album would probably have lent focus and coherence to this certainly not ungifted band or meritless release.

Buy the album from Amazon | [itunes link="http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/black-hole/id331004196?uo=4" title="The_Silent_Years-The_Globe_(Album)" text="iTunes"]