Now that a full generation of young musicians has absorbed the beauty and scale of Montreal, Iceland and outlying parts of Scotland, Chicago and Texas, there’s a scramble on to make epic guitar music into something that can stir a response from an excited, wider and wiser music audience. Contenders are multiplying but it’s only very recently that I’ve been convinced. iLIKETRAiNS for one have successfully managed the appropriation to make their new history folksongs into something fresh and exciting.
And here are VESSELS, with more rock in their roots, but with the same yearning for something more nourishing, dynamic and euphoric. Their first demo EP was very promising. This single really delivers the goods.
”Yuki” is a modestly brief four minutes 42. It’s built around a three bar piano phrase of considerable beauty. The development glances over a shoulder at post-OK Computer RADIOHEAD, with some aching vocal, a glitchy ruffle or two in the rhythm track and some very careful, very accomplished slow crescendo-building. That piano phrase is still there at the end though and we seem to have hardly started when it’s all over and fading into the cold night of longing. This is successful hypnosis. We want to hear it again.
|
“Forever The Optimist”, adventuring a little further into five minutes 29, has a touch of TORTOISE in there, and things drive along with more urgency. Two voices (Tom Evans and Lee J. Malcolm) share the focus, coming in from different angles to set up an interesting tension. A bigger drum kit sound is very welcome (Tim Mitchell) and things start to get beautifully loud as Martin Teff wades in with bass and extra guitar. VESSELS have really cracked the quiet bit loud bit problem, so that (like a symphonic work), the changes come naturally, expressively and bang on time.
This is accessible, exciting music. The reaction VESSELS got at last Summer’s Carling Leeds Festival showed their huge potential for crowd pleasing with serious music. A recent tour, Radio One exposure and this debut single announce their full arrival as contenders.
www.vesselsband.com
www.myspace.com/vesselsband
|
