As Summer ends and the nights draw in, the timing of the third album from Boduf Songs could not be better.
The sighs and whispers that permeate the eight tracks about death, fear and alienation plunge the listener into a mood of introspective darkness in keeping with the seasonal downturn.
Boduf Songs is a one man mission by Mathew (Mat) Sweet, a resident of Southampton who - if his record label are to be trusted - locks himself away in his bedroom honing his songs of quiet desperation.
His literary mentor is H.P.Lovecraft, a writer who also found a surreal beauty in tales of doom and gloom. The influence of Lovecraft's outsider stance is clear from the song titles alone, take for example: 'Pitiful Shadows Engulfed in Darkness' or 'Found on the Bodies of Fallen Whales' .
The opening lines from each of the first three songs also maintain the bleak tone:
"All of heroes died the same day...." / "We fell to earth from pitch black skies ....." / "You dragged your corpse around...."
Add to this the leaden pace of the tracks, and you would be forgiven for thinking that this is a soundtrack by and for someone prone to suicidal tendencies.
Yet there is something morbidly fascinating, and perversely uplifting, about the unwavering intensity of this record; an album so precisely conceived and sequenced that it demands to be played through in its entirety.
One wag has likened Boduf Songs to José Gonsalez on Prozac but this comparison, like others to quiet Folkies like Sam Beam (Iron & Wine) or M.Ward, is apt to mislead.
For convenience, I too have categorised this review within the 'Folk' genre but in truth Sweet's take on acoustic centred singer-songwriting has more in common with the portentous brand of slo-mo doom metal raised form the depths by practised merchants like Earth and Sunn 0)))). This partly explains how Boduf Songs ended up on Kranky, a label mostly associated with the blissed out ambience of artists like Stars of The Lid and apocalyptic post-rockers 'Godspeed!You Black Emperor' .
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For Boduf Songs songs are certainly not tied to any folk music traditions I recognise. Even the bleakest murder ballads seem like lightweight ditties by the side of these tortured tunes.
The eerie spectral squalls of sound that open the record and infiltrate other tracks are reminiscent of the experimental work Sweet did as part of Blue Baby Recordings project. This was group of friends, heavy metal aficionados mainly, who self released a series of Gothic, mostly drone orientated instrumental albums.
These touches help to create the kind of chilly claustrophobia found in cult movies like David Lynch's Eraserhead and Tarkovsky's 'Stalker' or on records like Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's masterpiece 'I See A Darkness'.
In short, not a record for midsummer dreams but a perfect companion for all your midwinter nightmares
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