How to describe the strange cocktail of slow folk of Damon and Naomi's sound? Stephin Merritt uses language that I'm much too self-conscious to seek to emulate: "like Kafka, Kafka père and Josef K in drag, pulling a rowboat slowly and quietly through chartreuse reeds in the gray dawn". D&N must approve, because they reproduced Stephin's review on their website.
Like Stephin, they are refined aesthetes with a taste for the avant-garde. They have their own book publishing business, and, at a gig in Manchester, dedicated a song to W.G. Sebald because he used to live there. Then the first song on this album, The Mirror Phase, seems to reference maverick psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's work, although the online sleevenotes tell a different story.
So how come they're not tearing up the charts, eh? Judah and the Maccabees is one of my favourite songs of theirs. Their version of Alex Chilton's Blue Moon sounds incredibly like Robert Wyatt/Matching Mole's Caroline at the start.
I got this in Polar Bear in Sheffield in March 2002. I think it might have been the day Polar Bear had its closing down sale, but I can't be sure.
The Ghost of the title is the Japanese band of the same name, who round out the sound of the duo with extra guitars and keyboards.
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
|
Comments