Continuing yesterday's riff about new music acquired, sampled and then put out to pasture, I see that I downloaded Abandoned Love on 27 April 2010, listened to it quite intently (between four and six listens) but then haven't played most of the tracks since 14 May last year.
I was really looking forward to this album, following Trembling Bells' Carbeth debut, but my lukewarm listening pattern reflects the mixed feelings I had about it. The sound has moved on. That's a good thing. I miss the old days when bands put out a new album every year and every one had a stylistic shift, not just a reiteration of brand values. Well done, Trembling Bells, for bringing back that ethic and aesthetic. I also loved it when I went to see them play on the tour that was ostensibly supporting this album, and they played hardly anything from it. Instead they played a whole bunch of newer songs (now released on another album, title
The downside is that Abandoned Love's subtle shift towards country rock, a fairly disciplined genre, moved the sound further away from the unhinged, feral passages that I loved with Directing Hand and missed with Carbeth. I'm not yet convinced by Alex Neilson's lyrics, and the re-imagined Yorkshire-in-the-Catskills that they paint (the vinyl LP has a Yorkshire white rose on the label on one side, a Lancashire red rose on the other — a concern that Neilson shares with Phil Oakey). And the word "priapic" fits in some songs, but for some reason doesn't sound right in a Trembling Bells one.
Yes, I got a vinyl copy of this album as well as the download (and, yes, that means I paid for the album twice). The artwork for Carbeth was so good, I fancied seeing something similar at 12" square. But as dictated by Sod's Law there's no booklet, inner sleeve or other insert with this album.
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