DÉSORMAIS

Dead letters to lost friends

CD, intr_version

As soon as they set into that faster groove after about a minute of intro to “hell’n ohio” I was thinking that now Désormais have embraced indie-rock (or indie-pop, or emo-pop, or whatever it is called today). And maybe Mitchell Akiyama and Tony Boggs have inhaled their fair share of bands from the slowly fading alternative country trend and the steeply rising trend of bands with guitars jangling as if Pavement had just abandoned ship and not five years ago. As Désormais they have been missing from the radar for some time now, though of course musically they were as active as ever (see e.g. Avia Gardner debut mini album as well as Joshua Treble and solo records) Add a history of intricate electronic music and fighting between structural causes and old fashioned songwriting plus a big fraction of prairie myths and the tales of the old times, and you might get close to “dead letters to lost friends” and its mix of electronica with screeching acoustic guitars and real drums and at times even some harmonica or slide guitars in the back. (Maybe it is only the picture of the old ship on the front cover that makes me think of The Decemberists all the time.) Even the slight breakbeats in “Salt Eyes Fuck Yeh” wont console those electronica fiends that shun any anaologue source of sounds (and somehow managed up to be in the same room as this record playing.) “Can you read this?” has a female singer and some jazzy-goes-country-brushed drums style complete with rusty steel guitar. But don’t worry, those country-purists won’t be able to stay in the same room either (even if the electronica afficianado has already left.)

A big departure? Listening back to the old Désormais records or intr_version releases, I can say no, because suddenly I find all these things in them as well. Which could be traced back to either me having listened to those old records badly in the past times or me reading into those old records with the new knowledge. Either way, my approach towards music has obviously become very constructivist and phenomenological, and I have no idea if that is good or bad. As long as I am able to enjoy music, to kick back and relax while a record such as this one spins, is a good thing in itself and everything is still in working order, I guess.

These tracks tell tales of long forgotten fates, of pain and desires, of dreams someone had and all the efforts and exhaustion this person had to overcome to somehow sometime make them come true. Most of these stories obviously or rather: audibly end tragically, which is a sad fact even if they have happened 150 or 200 years ago. It is immigrants, golddiggers, trainrobbers, eremites, trappers and sailors that come to my mind when listening to these violins, that screech like the wind in the sails of an old schooner. Or the look at endless mountains of woods and rocks that reverb in the layers of organs. A magical, mystical moment, the eternal breath of nature combined with the fate of the single man taking up surivival all by himself against the full force of nature. There is the beauty of creation and the fear of not being fit to handle the dangers hidden in there. If that reminds you of some of the acts and circles around the constellation label, then so be it (again – where did this electronica-label head to? But I like the direction, even if I don’t know where it we are heading.) Also, don’t be afraid of the melancholy or the long winding drones that accumulate here and there (what else could a track called “Drowning in Place” consist of? A dark and moving place that gets really close to the listener, whereas “The Ship sinks sideways” is filled with a tranquil beauty and slowness but somehow stays at a distance, only reaching for the listener in a pristine aesthetic of decay and sunshine) because it is specially those moments that are richest with history, allusions and mystic.

The record takes an interesting spin, with the more accessible and more songlike tracks in the beginning and the end, whereas the middle part dives deeply into the noise and avant-garde spectrum, e.g. the two drones mentioned before and the noise-bricollage of “I wore water wings but the chlorine still stings”. This way they take the listener along on their cruise and at the moment I am unable to decide which of these tracks tell their stories better, richer or in more detail, because I am still amazed at the richness these tracks tell stories all without words (with the one exception mentioned). Rarely have I found such vast and dense associations and connotations on a record that still sounds so lose and at ease, with the fair exception of Mitchel Akiyama’s solo-record “if night is a weed …” which grew into one of my favourite records of the last years. But the two are actually hard to compare, since “dead letters …” works in a completely different range of atmosphere, evoking the fates and lives of people who lost their way in the wilderness, whereas “if night is a weed ..” has a more intimate, personal feeling about it. I hope “dead letters to lost friends” will grow also, because then it could be really really big, starting off so well already.