Sacred Psalms’ draws on elements of both previous albums, whilst extending their instrumental range and the sheer depth and quality of their recordings. Inspired by a love of African, Caribbean, Middle Eastern, Balkan, and Javanese Gamelan music (sampled fragments of which drift through the mix), and with a vast array of sounds and ideas flowing about, this is both their most eclectic release to date and a fully coherent attempt to culminate and draw on everything good the band had previously committed.
Track Listing
1.) Well Bred
Father is the head of the household.
So Mother, breast feed your babies.
Working wives be your age.
PHD, BA, I’m a Doctor so listen to what I say.
You’re either crazy or dead, maybe you’re just not well bred.
Good manners, an index of breeding, dirty old man, no dirty old woman.
Your wife has a hysterectomy or mastectomy.
PHD, BA, I am your doctor so listen to what I say.
I see what I see and I’ll tell you your problems.
I’ll make you better. You’re either crazy or dead.
You weren’t well bred.
PHD, BA, I am your Doctor, listen to what I say.
I see what I see, I saw what I saw. You’re either crazy or dead.
I’ll make this world a better place.
Make this man a better man, make this wife a better wife.
You’re either crazy or dead, you just weren’t well bred.
Lets make this world a better place.
2.) Manes
We aren’t always who we say we are, but that just is the way we live.
Oh I don’t know, its hard being alone.
Sometimes I have been to the end, but I know I am coming back a better man.
Lovely little manes, please just let down your guard.
It’ll be, It’ll be alright, we’ll be tame, we’ll be tame tonight.
It just takes one time to be all over.
so lets just stop hiding behind our manes, our precious manes.
We can do it and breathe on our own.
I have been to the end, but I know this time I’m coming back a better man.
Lovely little manes, please just let down your guard.
We’ll be, It’ll be alright, we’ll be tame, we’ll be tame tonight.
3.) Someday
You see the night wake from its sleep,
With your dreams slowly creeping,
Loneliness swallows infant eyes.
All I hold is a solemn goodbye.
We all slowly lose our ways,
its the ones here, that make us stay.
Ill find my way back home, someday, someday soon.
4.) All Grown
It’s out of my hands. it’s out of my hands.
They’re not mine, they never were, Oh they never were.
But they were mine when I raised them safe, Oh so safe.
But the hordes came down and swallowed us whole.
They swallowed whole. Oh they swallowed us whole.
I cant protect you anymore.
You’re all grown.
We fall apart with every passing year.
I know I cant protect you anymore,
Because you’re all grown.
5.) Dusk
In a different light, oh maybe things could have been better.
Well I don’t know.
Did you know those were your last words?
I just wanted you to go, peacefully.
I am sorry for the struggle.
We didn’t always see eye to eye.
But with the coming of the tide, we’ll wash away my sins.
Oh please God just hide the blood.
Your grey skin was so silent as you floated off to your new home.
Flesh eating flesh at the bottom of the ocean.
So in a different light maybe things could have been better.
A different light.
6.) Child banter
I am not your mid wife Negro,
But I’m here to deliver your people.
So don’t judge me that is my job.
Take my books and we’ll eliminate the demons.
It’ll be a holy communion.
Praise these words that I preach to you.
And take these words to your grave,
Because I already dug it for you.
My wife couldn’t handle the stress on her insides..
Birth canals are births canals, our birth canals.
We all don’t make it out alive, it’s just another chapter I type.
I no mid wife Negro, but I deliver the people.
It’s just another chapter I type.
I’m not your mid wife Negro, but I’m here to deliver the people.
We all don’t make it out alive.
7.) Awaken
Please wake me up because I can’t take this anymore.
So wake me up, I just want to see her face one more time.
Wake me up on this dying day for the sun still shines.
All the memories will fade away, they’ll fade away.
Wake me up my eyes grow weary, for the end grows near.
The dark of the mind captures the soul,
Awakens the body we once knew.
Please wake me up I can’t take this anymore.
Please wake me up I can’t take this anymore.
Please wake me up I’m not listening anymore.
Please help me deal with this pain, it’s not going away.
8.) Sores
It is dark again and I’m behind the wheel.
Take me away from everything that I know and love.
Oh how easy it would be to just drive off the edge and into the hills.
There I lay, picking at the scabs.
The sirens light flood over me, I’m so easily broken.
The sores we inflict upon ourselves, hurts the ones we love.
Let them heal, let them heal.
So please just wake me from this coma that’s plagued me for the past seven years.
I have had enough of this. Oh I have had enough this.
I have had enough of this, please just wake me up, I just want to see.
Cleanse these sores from my skin. Cleanse these sores.
I just want to feel one last time.
9.) Behold
There is no use in holding back, this is who we are.
We are the many voices calling out.
Bright light bath me, lay down and take it in.
Behold this is who we are, this is who we are.
Bright light bathe me, show me the path home, show me the path home.
Bright light save me, give me the courage to make it on my own.
Bright light bath me, please lay down and take it all in.
Behold this is who we are, this is who we are.
Bright light bath me, show me the path home.
Bright light save me, give me the courage to make it on my own.
Bright light bath me, please lay down and take it all in.
Behold this is who we are.
10.) Endless Winter
And capillaries stretch to grey as we thin the blood for better days.
Laying there in your hospital bed, we’ll come one by one.
Praying for you to just hold on.
This day is still and achingly cold.
So pray for me.
And in the perfect sequence…
Time prolongs, time is long and bitter.
Oh it’s just an endless drifting away from all that is found and near,
Away from all that is kept and held,
Away from all that is warm and dear.
This day is still and achingly cold.
So pray for me.
Pray for me, because I cannot escape it.
This day is still and achingly cold.
Our Brother The Native return with their third effort for Fat Cat, in the form of a 5 track digital EP. Entitled ‘Parting Marrows’, the EP is more immediate - fuelled by shorter, summer-tinged compositions that are timeless, earnest and full of hope.
For ‘Parting Marrows’ the band incorporates a reduced line-up comprised of Joshua Bertram (guitar, bowed banjo, sounds/samples, sax, harmonium, synth, vocals), John Michael Foss (drums/percussion, piano) and Joe Akers (guest vocals on 2 tracks). The five tracks were recorded predominantly by Josh over the summer, in almost complete solitude due to the departure of close friends. Like ‘Make Amends…’, the record focuses once again on loss and loneliness, yet takes a different approach to its predecessor, this time trying to see the light and hope in loved ones returning and embracing the thought of reunion. You can hear ghosts and wraiths, chirping like birds hidden in a rich canopy, omnipresent yet unseen. The EP has more in common with ‘Tooth and Claw’, being less enigmatic than the dense drone-epics of ‘Make Amends…’. As Josh explains, “I wanted these songs to have more room to breath and the listener to be able to peak through the cracks here and there”.
New instrumental directions take place in the shape of saxophone, harmonium/organ and various junk-yard sounds. Josh devoured these new instruments, stumbling on fresh noises, searching freely as he wondered deep into uncharted sonic planes. Many exciting organic sounds where created through the inventive use of pumice stone, wind chimes and manipulated tape. Guest vocals are provided on ‘Augural Wraith’ and ‘Seminal Paws’ by Creepy Crawl’s Joe Akers, who brings a haunting tinge to the recording. Musical inspiration was derived from Josh’s love of African, Middle Eastern, Balkan and Javanese Gamelan music. This shines through, especially on ‘Warm Refines’, which stomps a twisted march to a wild tribal vocal, inducing compulsory toe-tapping and body-swaying.
The free-form junk-yard aesthetic, teamed with the camp-fire clap-along songs, (akin to the debut album ‘Tooth and Claw’), take a nod towards the output of Panda Bear, Múm, Paavoharju and Tape. Yet comparisons fall short as OBTN forge an idiosyncratic course that’s entirely their own. The shorter songs make way for an immediacy that sears itself to one’s memory upon first listen. The tracks swell and roll, collecting chimed momentum as they bubble with expressive lyrics that cackle with honest, pleading stories. The arrangements are tight, yet free to ramble, and there is an element of summer as the songs unfold like freshly blown dandelion seeds, finding their way to the nurturing soil of your eardrums.
Running to 22 minutes, this EP feels wholly substantial, and opens doors for the band’s next album. OBTN are still a very young band - continually experimenting / still studying / taking up summer jobs through spring break / collaborating across states and learning new instruments. This incredible hive of activity gives them an unpredictable and unique creative environment, in turn producing music that has astounded online communities, the media, gig-goers and the record buying public. The direction taken in ‘Parting Marrows’ is sure to generate much new interest and also raise awareness in such a rare and important outfit. OBTN are making some of the most far-out yet accessible music in the US right now.
The album ends on the piano-driven retrospective title track that drifts with former apparitions and once-hidden memories, strange and yet familiar to all. It’s is a moving ending to a pocket-sized collection of rich, life-affirming songs.
Track Listing
1. Augural Wrath
2. Seminal Paws
3. Failed Panegyrics
4. Warm Refines
5. Parting Marrows
Released in July 2006, the band’s debut album, ‘Tooth and Claw’, formed a thrilling, beautifully jumbled gush of ideas and emotions – its campfire clap-alongs, skewed vocals, and use of circuit-bent children’s toys seeing them coming on like the kid brothers of Animal Collective or CocoRosie. Following on from that release, yet marking a major shift and forming very much its own space, ‘Make Ammends, For We Are Merely Vessels’ is a bold and expansive album that ebbs and flows with huge power and considerable skill.
The eight songs here clock in at between six and fourteen minutes each and take their cues more from expansive post-rock / noise rather than any freaked folk scene. Self-recorded in Josh’s dimly-lit
Whilst ‘Tooth and Claw’ was recorded and pieced together through internet to-ing and fro-ing, before Josh had even met Chaz and John Michael, let alone played any shows, ‘Make Ammends’ was carefully planned out. Before recording, the band had been playing these songs together live for over a year, allowing them to change shape and grow from show to show (a process that’s ongoing), and had a good idea of how they wanted them to sound on record. As Chaz says “I feel this record shows who we are more now, instead of who we were trying to be” and Josh expands - “this sound has come much more naturally to us. Conceptually, it had so much more thought put into it than ‘Tooth & Claw’, and recording took about year overall, recording bits of songs here and there… We tried to keep this album much like our live shows, in the sense that we were creating a sonic tide that came in and out, with waves of sound building up slowly, and then finally coming to a huge crescendo and then calm again. We definitely didn’t overdo these songs, they are pretty much what we would play live - we didn’t orchestrate them and use smoke and mirrors to jazz the songs up. It’s pretty straightforward, more about honest sound, and bearing your flaws and creating tension…”
With less organic instrumentation and much more electronics, processed samples and sounds on this album than previously, the introduction of a synth gave the album a colder, darker edge. ‘The Multitudes Are Dispersing’ and ‘As They Fell Beneath Us’ feature an old piano in Josh’s house. ‘Younger’, features an old cassette recording of Josh (then aged just 4!) playing piano and his mum and dad asking him to sing songs for his grandfather who was in hospital at the time with cancer. ‘Tooth and Claw’ featured old samples of the same grandfather talking and singing, so it keeps a family link, a subconscious ongoing theme. The artwork features photos of the band’s families, and the album as a whole bears a far more personal intent. Chaz explains its subtext as being about ”the emotional connection between us as individuals, us as a band, and between our loved ones… an album about internal struggles, human emotions and how we deal with one another.” You might also hear a darker, much more youthful agression and angst.
Brilliantly controlled and hugely ambitious for a group so young, ‘Make Ammends..’ is a deep and powerful album that deserves your attention.
Track Listing
1. Rejoice
2. As They Fell Beneath Us
3. We Are The Living
4. Trees Part 1
5. Trees Part 2
6. Younger
7. Untitled
8. The Multitudes Are Dispersing
Informed by a wide range of influences, Tooth and Claw is a thrilling, beautifully jumbled rush and gush of ideas and emotions. With their campfire clap-alongs and skewed vocals, and the use of circuit bent children’s toys, Our Brother might at times come on like the kid brothers of Animal Collective or CocoRosie, yet this is far from being a derivative or imitative record. The band’s fusion of disparate sounds, influences and approaches forms a unique whole that is very much their own. Rather than being based around regular verse / chorus structuring, songs instead sprawl out and unfurl with their own particular logic, with sounds sometimes drifting and cutting across one another; sometimes locked down in focused rhythms that come over almost like a cracked electronics jug band; or sometimes just in straightforwardly simple but beautiful harmonised ballads. They also utilise the ability to shift gear and turn on a dime - from a delicate kind of stacked chaos to sudden bursts of nagging coherence. Meshing picked acoustic guitars, piano, banjo, with percussion, cracked electronics, bird noise, radio static, children’s toys, they perform a neat balancing act between the prettiness of their songs / melodies and the self-inflicted damage of the noise threatening to spew out from its seams or peel back / melt its edges. ‘Tooth and Claw’ is a very free and loose-sounding album, with a wealth of detail for the listener to explore and get lost amongst.
Track Listing
1. Introduction / Welcome To The Aviary 2. Apodiformes 3. Falconiformes 4. Strigiformes 5. Welcome To The Arborary 6. Catalpa 7. Tilia Petiolaris 8. Quercusfalcata 9. Nautical Spirits, Welcome To The Aquarium 10. Octopodidae 11. Sepiidae 12. Nautilidae