The new record from Timber Timbre is, largely, about atmosphere and restraint. In the wrong hands, such a stab might result in a Hollow Men kind of record (“our dried voices, when/we whisper together/are quiet and meaningless.”) Here, however, the result is both haunting and lasting, probably because the songs are good; this isn’t a feeble stab at half-ass Southern Gothic-inspired, acoustic guitar-driven chamber folk, but a well-realized batch of songs about loss and the abyss, with a smattering of the supernatural. Timber Timbre, the nom de indie rock of Canada’s Taylor Kirk, sounds like a whole raft of artists (The Animals (more on that later), any number of classically imagined bluesmen and Nick Drake all spring to mind) but manages to craft a sound that is unique and spellbinding. The songs, primarily, are stripped down, vocal-centric set pieces that conjure images of a wide range of spooky circumstances, but nearly all have a sonic left turn that’s perfectly timed and executed. (The spaced out guitar solo at the conclusion of “Lay Down in the Tall Grass,” the sneakily sly piano line in “Demon Host” and the idly contemplative strings in “No Bold Villain” all fit the bill there.) As a whole, the eight songs on Timber Timbre are going to be lodged in your noggin for a good long while, lurching and swaying their way into your subconscious.
Given that much of the record is about the lyricism, it makes sense to address that side of the record first. The album is laced with literate and chilling references that evoke “A Rose for Miss Emily” kinds of scenarios. Have a listen to the track below, “Lay Down in the Tall Grass” for a fairly representative batch of what the album has to offer. References to basement seances, rotting bodies and recurring dreams litter that track, culminating, for me at least, with this line: “you dug me out of this shallow grave with your Swiss army knife, only you could revive me, so barely (badly?) decomposed.” That’s heavy stuff. The album’s opening track, “Demon Host,” after describing what sounds to be a tumultuous and already concluded affair, closes with “I know there’s no such thing as ghosts, but I have seen the demon host,” followed by that piano line we mentioned above and ethereal, angelic choir-like “oh-oh-oh”s. Typically, I’d hear a song like “Magic Arrow” as a metaphor, (“few escape your magic arrow”) but given the context, it might be intended literally. The lyrical approach here is a large part of the album’s appeal. It shares a gene or two, maybe, with The Decemberists’ angle, but hews more towards sincerity than snobbish show-offiness. The line that Kirk returns to frequently in “Magic Arrow,” which explores variants of fear of a white rider, is emblematic of what he does on much of the album. Where Meloy and company are (I’d argue) trying to impress listeners with their erudition (which isn’t a bad thing, by the way), Kirk is trying to get a bifurcated emotional response (some constantly fluctuating mix of longing and terror), which is both admirable and ambitious.
The musical approach that supports the lyrics is finely tuned to make sense. (You couldn’t put a techno beat behind this stuff with any sort of success, after all.) It’s, largely, a quietly nuanced sonic approach, with a heavy focus on restrained guitars as an anchor, well-timed organ and piano bits and, as described above, little flourishes that make the overall spare approach work. When Kevin listened to the record, his initial response was that it sounded “hollow,” not in the pejorative T.S. Eliot sense I hit in the introduction, but in the abandoned mansion sense. The record both describes things that happen by the light of a full moon in the basement of an abandonded house on a hill, but sounds as if it was recorded there as well. Drop the needle on this thing and you’ll see Kirk in front of an empty fireplace in a ramshackle Victorian palace, surrounded by guitars with the finish worn off and ancient organs with missing teeth. Pushing the lyrical agenda with the instrumentation is a neat trick and one that’s pulled off with aplomb on Timber Timbre.
We kind of let the ball drop here at Citizen Dick on the whole quarterly report thing. We did it once, thinking that we’d keep you updated every three months or so on records that were angling for a spot on our year end list, then we kind of spaced on doing it again in July and, odds are on, we’ll miss out on quarter three in September as well. However, if I was pressed to name my favorite records of the year to this point, Timber Timbre would have a place in the top five. (For those curious: Megafaun, Akron/Family, Harlem Shakes and Southeast Engine round out the list at the present.) It’s artful and direct and I completely love it. Canadians have been on this record for a while, as it was released up north earlier in the year, but it was just made available to the rest of us last Tuesday. Grab it soon. Listen to it over and over. Further, if that picture above is any indication, I’m assuming Timber Timbre’s live show is something that ought not be missed. He’s got a few dates in parts of Canada that I’ve never been to; hopefully he’ll be in Ohio soon.
(One last bit worth mentioning (maybe): it seems the Kirk listened to “The House of the Rising Sun” about a thousand times while he was putting this record to tape. There’s a direct lyrical reference in “Until the Night is Over,” which starts with “There is a house in New Orleans, where you woke from a coma and they bit your cheeks” and the organ solo in the straight blues stomp “Trouble Comes Knocking” sounds so much like Alan Price that you’d think the dude sat in. I have no idea if these two references are important to understanding the record as a whole, but I do know that they are cool as hell. Who’s cooler than Eric Burdon? What’s a cooler Animals cut than “The House of the Rising Sun?” Having the minerals to poke so directly at such an epochal track is another thing to like about Timber Timbre.)
