The stateside fringes The Wire's David Keenan collectively dubbed New Weird America only four years ago sounded a bit different this different year. More melody, more cohesion, and-- for better and worse-- less chaos: In 2007, several of the bands earmarked in Keenan's wide menagerie came closer to home to roost, at least temporarily. Magik Markers made a piano-heavy record of damaged torch songs, and Marker Elisa Ambrogio sang sweetly with beau Ben Chasny on his latest, Six Organs of Admittance's Shelter from the Ash. Sunburned Hand of the Man proved vivacious beneath the editing touch of British fan Kieran "Four Tet" Hebden, while Massachusetts brethren MV & EE washed Neil Young's Decade in lye soap. Devendra Banhart sounded like a 17-year-old with a Lyrichord crush, and Animal Collective continued to hem the noise inside the pop. And a year after releasing a 12-song, 51-minute rock album, Sonic Youth covered Bob Dylan, while Thurston Moore released a largely acoustic album under his forename and Kim Gordon portrayed an aging folksinger in I'm Not There. Oh, and there's Mouthus, the Brooklyn-based, guitar/drums/electronics noise duo of Brian Sullivan and Nate Nelson. For their Load Records debut, Saw a Halo, Sullivan and Nelson landed a mostly perfect album. Though known for electricity and abrasion, Mouthus added acoustic guitars for three of the record's seven tracks. Surprise, surprise.
Acoustic guitar excepted, the success of Saw a Halo depends largely on the same elements as the rest of Mouthus' 10 LPs since 2002. The duo's sound still pivots on manipulation. Nelson's drums can sound like traditional traps one minute or dim, percussive clicks the next, and guitarist Sullivan can (but rarely does) twist through a bona fide solo or use his instrument just as an input for pedals and as an outlet for cacophonous textures. Fascinating but vaguely familiar sounds have always been paramount to Mouthus' appeal, as has gumption. Mouthus' most riveting moments have come when Sullivan and Nelson attacked a motif or incidental sound with gusto, pushing everything to be louder, bigger, more daring. On Saw a Halo, they do that seven times.
But Mouthus is controlled and composed here, too, and that's the linchpin. Saw a Halo adds structural smarts to sonic iconoclasm as it moves through big arcs lined with micro-plots of clashing sounds. By the time Sullivan lets an eight-minute shrill solo collapse to a feedback-and-percussion din on closer "The Gift of Sighs", that arc is exhausting and cathartic. Something about it feels like high drama: The secret is order, with seven tracks split into two sides (you'll notice seven seconds of silence after track four if you're tuning in digitally). Those track markers may seem arbitrary, jokes of sorts amid a persistent, unflinching, even monotonous noise.
But the meticulous Mouthus demands attention. Each track shift here represents a significant sonic event buried within the squall, and each new idea drains into the next. Opener "Your Far Church", for instance, is a broken, somber ballad of strummed acoustics and multi-tracked vocals, steadily battered from beneath by an undercurrent of clattering drums. They sweep up, digesting and reorganizing the surroundings like a vortex. Track two begins, and leftover vocals are pushed beneath a sharp static gale and stabbed by bursts of guitar feedback. The rhythm mutates constantly. When the shard falls into a deep fryer and its thin, penetrating tone suddenly becomes thick and bludgeoning, track three begins. The drums submit, biding the roar's orders and building into a militaristic, cymbal-and-tom regimen. When the beat finally disappears, the thick static tires of itself. Track four begins, and sheets of sound whittle away into beautiful undercurrents that float like a perfect post-rock comedown. Except then Mouthus come back up, smearing a tampered tribal rhythm with sharp feedback and spectral whispers. Side two does the same, and-- be forewarned-- the close is completely devastating.
On Saw a Halo, Mouthus has done what is so difficult for so many bands: They've held firm to what made them innovative and interesting, but they've poured it into a shape that makes it new and forceful all over again. Mouthus were great as early as 2005's Slow Globes; now-- with mastery over some of the most daunting sounds coming out of experimental circles in 2007-- they're mostly peerless.
