All I need is some sunshine
Listen, folks: you and I both know that Timber Timbre is not going to win The Polaris Prize tonight (frankly, if anything OTHER than some hipster bullshit like The Weeknd or Austra wins I’ll eat my own hat out of surprise). But I feel quite strongly that it should. Let me tell you why.
Creep On, Creepin’ On sounds unique. It is a singularity. It’s like an evil thing crawling out of a swamp in a hot, sticky, equatorial environment. It sounds like a soundtrack to a John Carpenter movie from the 1980’s, a film with crushed black cinematography and ominous settings, slow pans to disfigured creatures that are somehow human but still somehow not as they amble after a buxom young woman who is scrambling as best she can for safety. It sounds like the grim specter of death but with an absurd sense of melody that is somehow just as grim as the events and places described in the lyrics.
For me this is where Timber Timbre starts. As good as their Polaris-nominated self-titled release a few years ago was (and brother, it was GOOD) this is a truly singular, cohesive artistic vision. Songs from the previous album like “We’ll Find Out” were too pretty, too delicate to exist comfortably alongside numbers like “Trouble Comes Knocking.” The latter is the type of song that exists throughout Creep On, the menace of the lyrics paired so well with the ominous nature of the music.
But Creep On also does something that is so key it seems almost obvious, it’s simplicity making it hard to believe Taylor Kirk didn’t think of it years ago. Instead of the minimalist production last time around, Kirk and the band went full maximalist; the sound of this album is immense! It’s heavily compressed and orchestrated in such an all-enveloping way that it wraps your entire body in its sound waves, threatening to overwhelm you like a character in one of the band’s own murder ballads.
The stand-out track and first single “Black Water” is as far as you need to go to recognize the sea change. It starts out with a reluctant groove, Kirk’s trademark slow tempo lifted by lilting, bright piano that echoes his near-falsetto cooing. He’s insistent, pleading to the heavens, “All I need is some sunshine,” but the remainder of the song is comprised of anything but. A bass line that borders on menacing takes over in the verses, as Kirk’s voice is enveloped by a perfectly dry reverb. Over the song’s length he paints a picture of a forest in shades of black: a siren’s call, ominous caves, tar pits, a burning Viking ship, a falling moon, a witch’s cauldron, birch trees that seem to have eyes, hundreds of dead whitefish floating in a lake. The subject of the song falls to the ground and plummets into madness, which seems like an inevitability considering the surroundings, and dives repeatedly into the titular onyx tide. It’s a snapshot of a moment that Kirk and crew drag out for six minutes that seem to pass all too quickly, especially when the panicked, layered violins and fellow Polaris nominee Colin Stetson’s disturbingly relaxed saxophone come in. Those elements, along with Kirk’s defeated intonation of the words “black water,” allow the listener’s mind to fill in the obvious gap of just what happens next.
And that’s just one song. Witness “Bad Ritual,” where a man is haunted by his lover’s departed former paramour in the form of a poltergeist. “Too Old To Die Young” has electric guitar and a stomping drum beat that hints at 50’s rock and roll, but the sampled, mildly distorted screams (stopping just short of a Wilhelm, it seems) and violins taken straight from a Hitchcock movie’s big reveal add an element of impending doom and danger that would’ve had the band rated X if they were actually operating back then. “Lonesome Hunter” is as close to a traditional love song as you get, but the stabbing piano notes, damaged atmospherics, and sharp-edged feedback never let you forget what band you’re listening to. Kirk also paints love itself as a spell one is kept under, making it sound more like something that will crush you to death than save your life.
Then there are the instrumental pieces, which somehow achieve an even more frightening tone without Kirk’s demented poetry. Colin Stetson and his array of woodwinds prove invaluable here, even though interviews reveal that Kirk wasn’t sold on his contributions at first. The range of tone he provides and the sometimes impossibly-deep rumble of the bass and baritone saxes are an element you simply can’t imagine Timber Timbre without.
So that’s the album in a thumbnail. This review is only a brief exposé, an eye up to the keyhole of a dimly lit bedroom where something obscene and unspeakable is happening. To me Creep On Creepin’ On is a singular, albeit horrific, artistic vision realized flawlessly on a record that will literally take your breath away…maybe forever.
Check out the other nominees here and tell me I’m wrong!
Buy this album and more, including new reissues of Timber Timbre’s first two records, through their A&C web store or on iTunes.
