1) MAUDLIN OF THE WELL – Bath / Leaving Your Body Map (2001)
(No, this is not cheating.
Bath and
Leaving Your Body Map (known from this point forward as
Bath And Body Works, or BABW for short) function as “sister” albums and are meant to be viewed as a conceptual whole. Both were released on the same day, possess the same number of tracks, run the same length (about an hour) and share mirroring structures.
Bath is clearly meant to be the first in listening order, since Interludes 1 and 2 appear there, while 3 and 4 appear on LYBM.)
So albums #1 and #2 caused a minor dilemma for me. It came down to the age-old problem of Head Vs. Heart. You see, I
wanted to go with
Illinois there for a little while… I really did. What could sum up a relatively inhuman decade (and I use that adjective most endearingly) than perhaps the most altogether human album I have ever heard? Yeah, I wanted to go all nice and proper with things. But to hell with that—
Bath And Body Works has been the obvious choice since day one, whether based in terms of listenability, scope, uniqueness, variety, depth, long-term payoff or anything else that makes a #1 Album Of The Decade a #1 Album Of The Decade. I reckon you could say that in the fight of Head Vs. Heart, the head won. Because this one’s a no-brainer.
But before I delve into the album itself, let me first address a few common misconceptions:
1) This Is A Metal Album. I’m not going to lie—there are some scary growling vocals on here, along with pummeling downtuned guitars and fast double-bass drum kicks. As I said before, the “extreme” side of the band composes about a fourth of their overall sound. Take it or leave it. But to lump MOTW in with bands like Edge Of Sanity or (ugh) Opeth would be grossly misleading—much like throwing Radiohead in with Fennesz or some other electronic fuckery. “We are more like a band who plays metal from the outside looking in,” said Toby Driver in a long-ago interview. “I would like if our music—which has elements that are only historically found in metal (like the death vocal)—was called something else, so that the ‘death vocal’ was no longer exclusive to metal.” In the same interview, another band member (there are eight or so) states that metal is “the lowest common denominator” when it comes to describing MOTW’s sound. So this begs the question: if the band were trying so hard not to be stuck on bills opening for Iced Earth, then why all the monstrous slabs of guitar? Why the intermittent screaming vocals? The world may never know. (Disregarding, of course, the fact that it all just
works.) Anyway, when Maudlin Of The Well bring the Heavy, it’s usually in the vein of Tiamat’s
Wildhoney, or early My Dying Bride, or early Dismember. And for those readers who don’t come from a metal background and therefore have no idea what I’m talking about—these are GOOD THINGS. Trust me. But moving on…
2) The Songs Are Random. If the saying holds true that “Metal Is Law,” then BABW is the motherfucking Bar exam. The band touches on all of the following: razorsaw death metal, claustrophobic doom, thrash, goth (think glistening keyboards and operatic female vocals), lo-fi indie, chamber music, jazz, New Age and everything else including the terms “progressive” or “post-” or “avant-.” That’s the typical Allmusic.com description anyway, which causes most people to mistake MOTW for one of those Everything-Under-The-Kitchen-Sink type of bands, just an assortment of haphazardly thrown-together inclusionary meta bullshit. This is NOT THE CASE. And while there
are a couple of jarring switches that occur, they are almost always in the service of the songs themselves. Each composition, simply put, “makes sense” organically. Just don’t expect to realize this on the first listen. Or the second. Or the third.
3) This Is An Intentionally-Obscure Fanboy Selection And Should Therefore Be Disregarded. This obviously has more to do with me than it does with the music itself. But I need to make this point clear, if for no reason other than my own peace of mind. Yes, I am a massive fan of Toby Driver’s work. Massive. Out of the top nine hours of music (albums #1-8), Driver was responsible for three-and-a-half of them (over a third). I can’t explain why he creates some of the most haunting, unearthly music the world has ever known—he just does. “Hey fuck face,” you might say. “You’re just pimping your favorite Little Band Who Could just to show how cool and ‘underground’ you are, aren't you?” And my response would be: Yes. Maybe. A little. But is it really
my fault that
Bath And Body Works was made by a bunch of art-school twentysomethings who had no idea how to promote themselves or how to sign with a record label that wouldn’t dick them over, a band that was too artsy for metal town and too “Back In The Village” for Greenwich Village? Is it
my fault that BABW—despite seeing re-release a few years back—is still almost impossible to find and last I heard was going for $80.00 on eBay? (That’s $40.00 per CD, folks.) So yes, I’m aware that this seems like a cop-out: HEY FOLKS HERES THIS FANTASTIC ALBUM THAT UNFORTUNATELY YOU CANT HEAR HAHA SUX 4 U!!! But I’ll try to work something where I can host the mp3s on this site, even if it’s just for a couple of days. (Most, if not all, of the songs are on YouTube, but some of them are of utter shit sound quality so BEWARE.) I’ll keep you updated (maybe try
here?). But onto the album…
TOBY DRIVER: “
At the time I was keen on the idea of an ‘astral library,’ an extraplanar place where all art already exists… There are no shelves, no books… It doesn't exist as notes or pictures, but just as this sort of aether, an idea, and the human element is the artist's personal translation of the meaning… It’s basically a more New-Agey version of a Muse, a more adventurous version of having visions.
“
I came up with a guitar tuning that really touches me in a weird way, and tuned the acoustic to it. I leave it that way by my bedside, and each night just before sleeping I hit the strings so it resonates as I fall asleep. Ultimately the experiment really works—‘Interlude 4’ is entirely dreamt. The songs in this tuning appear across the double-album in the order they were written, to show the development from conscious to unconscious creation.”
So I guess I sort of jumped the gun a little when I called Godspeed “music from a dream.” I have to say though—as ridiculous as the idea of an “astral library” sounds (Driver himself would likely admit as much today)—I can’t deny that there is
something going on here that defies explanation. I’ve already talked about the vast number of genres that MOTW incorporate, along with the huge cast of characters (most of them trained in classical composition), so I reckon it’s no big whoop that they stumbled upon some weird, engaging stuff over the course of two hours. And even IF Toby Driver was onto something “astral” here (and that’s a big IF), I don’t see how that would make one bit of difference if the music itself was unlistenable. Yeah, there’s a lot to assimilate and, yeah, sometimes the album feels oddly less that the sum of its parts. It’s massive. It’s demanding. It’s “brutal” at times. But this is also a
human album, and like
Illinois it yearns to find the spiritual in the everyday. Take “Girl With A Watering Can,” a song that is about “the loss of innocence, and the bleakness in realizing that the magical eyes you saw through when you were a child just keep closing and really don’t ever re-open.” But if you come away from this paragraph thinking this album is going to be all hot tubs and hackysacks, then I’ve fucked up bigtime. Because this thing has teeth. Big, sharp, pointy ones.
BathIt begins with the eight-minute overture “The Blue Ghost / Shedding Qlippoth,” an instrumental showcasing the band’s equal capacity for the ethereal and the immense. It just builds and builds unreasonably until we’re hit with “They Aren’t All Beautifull”—the most straightforward (höhö) song on the album. It’s like a litmus test for the listener: a death metal onslaught followed by a wall of sludge followed by saxophones honking over weird time signatures. At least they were thoughtful enough to frighten off unwary listeners as soon as possible. If you’ve made it past this point and are not yet sufficiently confused, “Heaven And Weak” comes gliding in—a song that builds from autumnal seagazer (höhö, I just made that up!) to neck-snapping thrash to the outer constellations without a whole lot of stalling in between. “Interlude 1” is short and pretty, and after that it’s all funeral organs, cymbals and the turning loose of the swans. “The Ferryman,” at any rate, is pretty much the only example of Dante’s vision of hell being done justice musically (especially check out the lost-soul voices in the second stanza: “
Ibant obscuri sola…” to hear what I mean). The voices of the damned then dissipate as the river Styx transforms into your bathtub. After the gentle “Marid’s Gift Of Art” comes “Girl With A Watering Can” with its Stravinsky clarinets, angelic female vocals (courtesy of Maria something-or-other), wind whispering through dead leaves, and ungodly guitar solo. Then Maudlin Of The Well
really go for the jugular. “Birth Pains Of Astral Projection” starts off and we’re back in the spa being cleansed of all bodily toxins. But these first three minutes are only delaying the approaching nightmare—the terrible panic upon seeing your body from outside itself. But whatever Aquarian voodoo is involved here detracts not one iota from this absolute MONSTER of a track, which happens to include another jawdropping solo from Greg Massi. “Interlude 2” is a loungey piano-and-guitar ditty (where water is the main percussion instrument), while “Geography” closes everything out on a restrained, plaintive note. “Breath is real, anger’s real / Sleep on your birthday and cry / Cry my baby.” Yeah, this is a metal band all right. After forty seconds of silence we then set about the process of…
Leaving Your Body Map“Stones Of October’s Sobbing” is pretty much the weirdest fucking thing ever. Take the usual death growls and low-end crunch, heap on a bunch of saxophones and horns, give the clarinets the song’s most badass role, and play it all in a drunken waltz time. In my mind “Stones…” performs the same function as “They Aren’t All Beautifull” did on
Bath—a litmus test (and likely automatic turn-off) in case you’re like me and accidentally heard LYBM first. “Gleam In Ranks” is the fastest, most “rocking” song on the album (and just as bizarre as anything else you’ll find… The best comparison I can come up with is to something Arcturus might have done during their carnival phase.). Falsetto vocals and Christmas bells—that’s “Bizarre Flowers.” “A Violent Mist” = chain-dragging doom metal and a funk breakdown in the vein of Faith No More (one of the album’s most surprising moments, and also one of the best). And, of course, the megalithic “/” separating the two. “Interlude 3” is a warm breeze of strings and bongos and acoustic guitar. Then comes “Garden Song,” the hairiest and ugliest moment of the album, which is followed directly by “The Curve That To An Angle Turned,” the gentlest. It’s actually sort of funny, Driver and that Maria chick doing a weepy duet of “Please kiss me…” followed by screams of “BELIAL! ROSIER! PAIN! LIAR!” Honestly, this is probably my least favorite song on the album—if only because it gives the “all-their-songs-are-random” crowd a slight degree of credibility. That, and it has a section straight from Empyrium’s
Weiland (with old woman vocals and everything). But all is saved by “Sleep Is A Curse,” where the sparseness of Nick Drake’s
Pink Moon takes on the sweeping string embellishments of
Bryter Later in probably the only song off the album that you can play in front of your girlfriend. “Riseth He, The Numberless” is nine minutes of menace (highlighted by another fantastic transition between the two parts involving at least three harps). Now we've come upon the album’s centerpiece— “Interlude 4,” which is purportedly “entirely dreamt” and is (according to Driver) “the apex of MOTW’s music” and “the ultimate goal of what MOTW has been trying to achieve since its inception six years earlier.” I’ll just leave it at that. “Monstrously Low Tide” is the album’s gorgeous, maritime closing hymn. “I will always look with love thereon…”
So there it is—that’s about the best I can do.
Bath And Body Works, if you haven’t inferred already, is not for everyone. Chances are you’ll find it downright aggravating. But if you’re of the adventurous sort, someone who enjoys hearing melodies that no one else has ever played before, then I recommend that you track this down. It’s bloated, naïve and preposterous, but that’s partly why I love it. It may not be the BEST album of the decade (though I think it is), but it is without a doubt MY FAVORITE. Send me to Neptune and allow me to take just five albums—this would probably be one of them.
For now, here is decent-quality YouTube track that I found:
“Bizarre Flowers / A Violent Mist”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu7oq4G3HvI&feature=related“Heaven And Weak” and “Interlude 4” can be found at the band’s mySpace page:
www.myspace.com/maudlinofthewellNo big In Summation thoughts about the decade here, other than that it was funny to see stuff like Sigur Rós become chick music. Oh well, here’s to the next ten years of WTF. The 2000s = the decade where music finally went weird.
