OR   Search for Artist/Title    Advanced Search
 
you are not logged in...  [login] 
All Reviews    Edit This Review     
Review: 'Doomed Bird of Providence'
'Blind Mouths Eat'   

-  Album: 'Blind Mouths Eat' -  Label: 'Front & Follow'
-  Genre: 'Folk' -  Release Date: '11th November 2013'-  Catalogue No: 'F&F029'

Our Rating:
Since Nick Cave references will doubtless abound in reviews of this album, I’ll move right on and get to the core of this black folk concept album, the second by Mark Kluzek and his various collaborators under the Doomed Bird of Providence moniker. Like its predecessor, ‘Will Every Prey’, ‘Blind Mouths Eat’ is not an easy or accessible album, but it is deeply compelling as it explores – in segmented sections – events in Australian history that are brutal and bloody.

‘The Cave of the Doughboys’ is a sea shanty slowed to a crawl, before the dirge-like drone of ‘Hang From Your Neck’ is every it as desolate as the title suggests, building to dark and dramatic crescendo somewhere between early iLiKETRAiNS and latter day Swans. The folky fiddle on ‘To Those Who Are Most Hungry’ in the hands of any other band would probably be used to create some levity, but Doomed Bird keep the pace and the mood low, dredging their way through another wrist-slitter.

‘I’m coughing and spitting up blood’ Mark Kluzek wheezes repeatedly in a deathly drone on ‘Ships They Come and Go’. It’s not all doom, gloom and despondency, though: anger is the colour of ‘Through the Street of Albany’. The final brace of songs are nothing short of epic, although the grizzled, bitter and anguished ‘Snatched and Devoured’ at six minutes in length is a concise pop song in comparison to the 18-minute closer, ‘Mahina’. Harrowing doesn’t come close. By the end of the album you feel as thought you’ve lived through every one of the events depicted, in real time. Dark yet strangely beautiful and phenomenally powerful, ‘Blind Mouths Eat’ is an album to ponder, to agonise over and to clutch your plague-ridden guts to.
  author: Christopher Nosnibor

[Show all reviews for this Artist]

READERS COMMENTS    10 comments still available (max 10)    [Click here to add your own comments]

There are currently no comments...
----------



Doomed Bird of Providence - Blind Mouths Eat