Less Bells - The Drowned Ground

A Closer Listen

It’s rare for an artist to release three excellent albums in a row, even rarer when it’s the first three albums; but this is what Less Bells has accomplished with The Drowned Ground.  Now billed as a duo, Mojave’s Julie Carpenter and Dain Luscombe are once again joined by friends who help to flesh out their vision.  Listen carefully, and one will hear the sound of coyotes and the desert wind (forebodingly called “murderwind”) outside their studio, while hurdy-gurdy, shahi baaja, Buchla synth and violin play within.

As with their other sets, The Drowned Ground is a triumph of mood.  The compositions possess a quiet intensity, like an old tree that has withstood many storms.  Halfway through the title track, the music surges, and is joined by muted percussion.  Wordless vocals soar above the strings: a hero or heroine’s theme, the sound of coming home.  Only then does the piano become apparent, the response to the call.

“A Failure of Horses” is a particularly distinctive piece, as the organic and electronic elements coalesce into breaths of mourning.  We’re not sure what the horses have failed at, or if there are simply not enough horses, or if horses are a metaphor for power applied and results dulled.  But the mood bleeds through; something has been lost, and the music is here to console.  When an electronic pattern emerges late in the track, it does so as a salve.

And then: bring on the murderwind.  If any track epitomizes the wide expanses of the desert southwest, it’s “Feral ghosts of the golden west.”  The title is a clash of aspects, danger and awe.  The music shimmers like an oasis and evaporates like an illusion.  Carpenter’s violin rises above the fray, a beacon in a sandstorm.  By the time the coyotes begin to yip, one hopes that the weary travelers are safe inside.  The foreground (yet still wordless) vocals of “Over the falls” imply that one danger has passed, but that another challenge lies ahead.  It’s time to flip the “vynil,” an Old English spelling for a folk-tinged platter.

When listening to Less Bells, it’s tempting to think that everything has to do with place, but while all of the music is informed by place, the themes are universal.  On this record, mourning and wondering hold equal ground.  The music is at turns wistful and yearning.  On “Frozen Charlotte Tends the Flame,” Rachel Smith’s flute conjures images of Native American ceremonies.  While the liner notes suggest that the album may be “post-human,” the human presence is always palpable, the connection to ancestral roots a symbol of connection.  “Scheele’s Green” (“the color that killed Napoleon”) is a mournful expression of the ways in which achievements can be illusions; and yet there is such dignity in the music, especially the scales and rising chorals of the center.  Then it all falls apart, like the end of “A Day in the Life,” but re-coalesces and stumbles forward, leaving only “A half hour with the stars in June.”

The closing piece incorporates many of the earlier elements: folk guitar, tribal percussion, soaring strings.  The shift arrives at 3:48, a concluding message from the elders, passed down through the ages, borne on choir and bow.  If we are indeed burning out, what beautiful, sorrowful embers we will leave.  (Richard Allen)