"My hammer feels the urge/ To nail you to the ground/ To smash one through your cheek." So begins another Boduf Songs LP (the fourth), with another deadpan fantasy about grievous bodily harm. If you're already acquainted with the project, welcome back to doom-folk machine Mat Sweet's morally ambivalent universe of violence, despair, and, not incidentally, loveliness. And if you're new to these parts... hope you're not squeamish about blood.
That's (mostly) a joke. Sweet's rarely macabre for macabre's sake; there's a ritualistic aspect to his recurring lyrical motifs and iterative acoustic arpeggios that suggests the Southampton, England home recorder calls up death and darkness in pursuit of life and light. Never was this more apparent than on Boduf Songs' last record, How Shadows Chase the Balance, where ever-bleak themes were bleached by shimmering melodies, swifter tempos, and cautiously optimistic soundscapes. Compared with Shadows, This Alone Above All Else in Spite of Everything's relative sobriety initially suggests Sweet's retreated to his full-bore brooding ways. In addition to the aforequoted opener, there's the haunted trudge of "Absolutely Null and Utterly Void", and purgatorial plod of "The Giant Umbilical Cord That Connects Your Brain to the Centre".
Don't get me wrong: Those are good songs. Sweet's got a sneaky gift for composition and a rare talent for selling material that in lesser hands would probably flop. But it's great to find that Boduf Songs have expanded their palette and accepted a few new risks, too. That's an honest-to-god backbeat in "They Get on Slowly"'s mix, and Sweet switches out his standard library hush for actual singing on Radiohead-reminiscent "I Have Decided to Pass Through Matter" (he should sing like that more often). But the real revelation here is "Decapitation Blues", a zombie tale that winningly segues from Pantha du Prince-flavored oscillating bell tones to funky dance figure to post-rock jam.
Such minor change-ups might seem ho-hum coming from a four-member band of cross-pollinating players working with different producers on every new release. But Boduf Songs is real home-grown, small-budget solo stuff. And considering Sweet has carved an interesting, comfortable niche for himself, it's pretty amazing that he hasn't painted himself into a solipsistic corner. As long as he's okay sharing space with demons, so are we.
