BLACKFIELD are based around two prime movers bearing the scars of past experience. The first, Steven Wilson, is (still) a mainstay in melancholic proggers Porcupine Tree, a band who've done a Bush and shifted sizeable units in the States after being largely shunned in the UK. The second, Aviv Geffen, is arguably Israel's most famous pop export: loved and hated with a passion in his homeland and famous for being the last person to speak to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin before he was assassinated.
With this in mind, then, to expect "Blackfield" to sound like The Libertines isn't entirely realistic. And so it proves, as this eponymous debut is as dark, charred and enigmatic as the murkily impressive artwork suggests.
The first track, "Open Mind" gives you an idea of the grand spectrum Blackfield feel capable of encompassing. Going from gentle, frail and acoustic at the verses to orchestra-tramping bombast at the chorus, it's sullen and schizophrenic and while it's undoubtedly big, soaraway ADULT music, it's too melancholic to drift entirely into AOR territory.
And it's undeniable Blackfield's music does possess a weird emotional pull at times. The title track, for instance, opens with lonely, U2-ish piano and wraps itself in windswept promise. Wilson's lyrics are ominously moving, culminating in the kiss-off line "All pale things under the earth will reverse", which even Ms.Fatalism herself, Rennie Sparks, would be proud of. Wilson scores agin with "Summer": lyrically a dark night of the soul, but the chorus soars, the Talk Talk-ish premise serves it well and it's got a sweetly evocative guitar solo.
Not surprisingly, the songs touched by the hands of Geffen are especially intriguing. "Scars" - built around loops, a drum'n'bass interlude and echoes of Massive Attack - is arguably the most complex thing here and features Geffen's Israeli band The Mistakes, while on the wracked "Pain", he confronts abject horror head on. "All my friends now try to save me - what a joke" he sings with real portent. However, it's the gloomily effective "Cloudy Now" where Geffen really makes his presence felt. It's a diatribe where he gets up close an personal about Israel and his significance there. "And the darkest thoughts, yeah I guess they;re my own/ There's wealth inside the bank, but there's nothing to show inside", he declares, taking a pull on a reality most of us would readily baulk at.
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On these tracks, Blackfield's looming presence tugs hard on the heartstrings, though there are occasions where it all gets too po-faced to assimilate. "Glow," for instance, grapples with self-loathing over mellotron and Fender Rhodes before deciding to crush it all forcefully with the whole band, thus dashing any chance the song had. "Lullaby", meanwhile is Coldplay-ish piano chromatica taken a bridge too far, and Wilson's closing "Hello" is no doubt intended as the huge, sweeping finale as the credits roll, but it's riddled with bombast and far too stadium-friendly for my liking.
Blackfield are - perhaps understandably - a strange band. Possessed of virtuosic skills and an inbuilt melancholia, they have a sombre quality that's attractive before they insist on burying it beneath too many layers of sonic window dressing. Consequently, "Blackfield" is an album you'll probably admire rather than love wholeheartedly, but one you will perhaps return to more than you first imagined.
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