THE BLACK HEART PROCESSION
Amore
del tropico
2LP/CD, Touch & Go
There is a heart-shaped fingerprint on the inside of the CD-cover, which
is all you should need to know, actually. Most of what this record is about
revolves around that insignia or could at least be guessed from there. The
band never worked that information so much, but “amore del tropico” is a
concept-album, which is also the reason why the band stepped away from their
convenient tradition of numbering their albums. Don’t be afraid, a small
“4” is hidden on the inner sleeve, right there next to the heart-shaped
fingerprint, which tells you, that the Black Heart Procession are still in
their line of things, still working up these beautiful, very very dark songs
and drawn-out harmonies, that make these chord-progressions so slow and
painful, yet wonderful and enjoyable at the same time. No one who liked the
first three records or so, will be disappointed by number four, because it
is really easy to just listen to “amore del tropico” as a bunch of song
not very much unlike the other three albums by the Black Heart Procession.
But the heart-shaped fingerprint tells us so much more (as we are all
aware of in our time, in which “crime-detective”-shows, autopsy-reports
and series about crime-scene-investigations are all trendy and popular.) for
instance that this record deals with love and crime, maybe even more than
you would think is possible after just a loose listening. Well, I didn’t
have a loose listening. Actually, this CD hasn’t been out of my CD-player
for a lot of time. There are still two or three records nearby my stereo
which I bought on the same but which remained unlistened, because I didn’t
want to miss the harmonies of songs like “a cry for love” or “the
visitor”. And now I am stuck with a great roadmovie in my head that this
record is the soundtrack, the storyline and the script to. I can see it all:
the dark desert-roads, the small, run-down towns, the
Quick-Stop-restaurants, the trailer-homes and old farm-houses out in the
woods or the mountains, the rusty old corvettes and trucks and - not at
least – the man torn by love and fate and the woman or women that might be
his destiny, the crimes and the gangsters and the victims. This story has
several plots in my head and everytime I listen through it some things
change, sometimes the whole story is different, other times there are just
some minor details that have changed. There is the final showdown at the
last chords of “a cry for love” and then the dreadful dream-sequence
during “before the people”.
The good thing about it is, that this record never gets boring. The Black
Heart Procession has used a lot of instruments (what the heck is an
optigan?) and studio-trickery including some electronic sounding stuff to
keep this record alive and full with new ideas and lines to keep the
listener interested for a long time. Of course, the stories in the songs and
the delicate harmonies go a long way, but that doesn’t help if every song
sounds just like the one before. Luckily, the band didn’t fall into that
trap and have kept up variation big enough. There are eerie
nearly-instrumentals, the drawn ballads and there are some songs that almost
have an upbeat-sound such as “only one way” or the hit-single “did you
wonder” – which I think I saw on Music Television. The last two songs
show this style very well: “Fingerprints” is almost funky, with the line
“they found my fingerprints” repeated over and over again, with some
electronic beats (or at least they sound that way) in the background. Then a
sigh and a strummed, acoustic guitar with such an old echo mixed in that you
won’t help thinking of an old prison cell right away and the line “I am
the one who has disappeared” to mark the final ending.
