Let's say you're literal-minded enough to look for the meaning in everything, that you check the placards next to abstract paintings and you couldn't buy Ulysses without an authoritative guide to explain the references. Who could enjoy Joyce if you can't tell the Biblical references from the Dublin slang for abusing oneself? I'm right there with you, which is why I used to bang my head against Cerberus Shoal's last disc, Chaiming the Knobblesome.
Chaiming was a major break from the past for a band that had already changed directions many times since their formation in the mid-90s. Cerberus Shoal have always played unique avant-rock, from the hardcore influence and glorious crescendos of their first albums to the steady pacing and global thrift store arrangements of their mid-career line-up. But Chaiming was their most complex effort yet: Suddenly, they had a torrent of words, in a surreal language. It was too meticulous to be stream-of-consciousness, but too chaotic to reveal any kind of meaning.
It never occurred to me that there might not be a right answer, until I drove up the coast to Portland, Maine, to ask the band in person. The change came after they lost three members--- who went back full-time to playing as Tarpigh-- and gained three new ones. Erin Davidson signed up after leaving Red Light City, but the band also brought in two less experienced musicians: Colleen Kinsella, who has drawn their cover art since Homb and sung in a folk duo with Shoal co-founder Chriss Sutherland, and Karl Greenwald, who had never been in a band, and who became their chief lyricist and Dr. Sample operator.
Even in avant-rock, a song's words are usually its focus. But that goes against the collaborative nature of Cerberus Shoal's music, where each member gets equal say and the music never centers on a lead voice. So the lyrics that Greenwald and the others write winds through the music like another instrument, and the words don't resolutely dictate a meaning-- except what the other players, and the audience, can find in the mysterious but provocative images.
The schism between 2002's Mr. Boy Dog and 2003's Chaiming the Knobblesome makes more sense if you listen to the split EPs they recorded in that time. ("Ding", on The Vim and Vigour of Alvarius B and Cerberus Shoal, is a definitive track for this line-up.) But Bastion of Itchy Preeves, which was actually recorded before Chaiming, is the most complete document of the band's transition. You can hear the methodical pace of the earlier Shoal on "Tekel Upharsin", where Tom Kovacevic returns to play oud. But the exotic instrumentation of the Tarpigh line-up makes way for alarm clocks and noise collages, from the howling scrap metal of "Grandsire" to the shimmering wrap-up, "A Head No Bigger than a Man's Cloud", where the electronics and bass drip like mercury.
And after the occasional vocals of their past few albums, most of this line-up sings. Sutherland's grainy tenor meets graceful wordless choruses on some songs, and eerier ejaculations on others: Kinsella's cackling on "Train Car Nursery", or Greenwald muttering and cranking like the troll that lives in your closet. The words on "Baby Gal" and "Train Car Nursery" have the sinister tone of the Chaiming material, but most of the lyrics slip in gradually. You can hear the excitement in the build-up of "Bogart the Change", where Sutherland grasps for words and fragments of lyrics as the music escalates, and when he reaches the climactic line-- "I know your feathers are wet"-- it bursts out not as cryptic nonsense, but as a near-epiphany of triumphant understanding.
Even at its extremes, Bastion has a smoother flow and more consistent palette than either Mr. Boy Dog or Chaiming. For a transitional album, it doesn't show a new band's fits and starts so much as the organic evolution of its voice. This is such a strong lead-in to Chaiming that the people who were surprised by the band's new direction may wish they'd heard this first. Fascinating in its own right, this album also taps your imagination more gently, and it's a smoother introduction to the world that Cerberus Shoal moved into. Either way, the two albums are perfect complements: Chaiming fully realizes this line-up, but Bastion illustrates how they got there.
