It's hard to talk about Crescent without engaging latent tendencies toward melodrama, nobly reaching for the appropriately epic metaphor, or fervently combing your memories for an applicable landscape: fiercely organic, Crescent's spare, throbbing soundscapes are hard to link up to anything other than large, natural formations. It's unsurprising, then, that Crescent, along with Movietone and Flying Saucer Attack, are the byproduct of Bristol's quasi-legendary space-rock scene.
By the Roads and the Fields, the band's fourth record (and first since 1999's Collected Songs) is still lodged firmly in the goo of post-rock drone-- its hazy, sprawling tracks pour on an avalanche of slow, spectral structures that often recall onetime labelmates Third-Eye Foundation. Punctuating their percussive tracks with tiny, hidden melodies, Crescent seem far less concerned with capturing anyone's attention than slowly seeping into their audience's collective subconscious, and as a result, By the Roads plays more like a long-term installation than a transient collection of songs.
Supposedly conjured with "no budget," By the Roads and the Fields is a brilliant exercise in empty-pocket resourcefulness: recorded on eight-track tape, the album boasts the unpredictable stylings of a self-made double bass, a stack of metal bowls, clips of found sound, prepared piano, copycat tape delays, bowed wine glasses, and loads of atmospheric tape hiss. Ultimately, Crescent's shoestring studio setup is evident in both its feats and foils: although meticulously arranged, there's an element of scrappiness inherent to these songs, a kind of palpable fragility that suggests that everything here could fall apart if shaken too hard, dissembling onto the floor in a fit of clatters and pings. Piano bits and meandering saxophone melodies wander in and out of the forefront, snippets of Melodica and organ pop up unannounced, and sparse, careful percussion strings everything together-- just barely.
Matt Jones' monotone, straight-faced chant/sing is hypnotic in its redundancy, but not especially engaging; even if you hug your eyes shut and mentally strip Jones' voice of its bloody red origins, it still doesn't add much to the wispy instrumentation, remaining too deliberately detached and lethargic to justify the distraction it inspires. Consequently, "Mica", the album's lone instrumental, is also its most compelling: a series of metal bowl-banging pings orchestrated (interrupted by the chirps of birds) and arranged, "Mica" is both weird and warm, a stark, metallic composition that's also surprisingly innovative.
But even while By the Roads and the Fields is, at times, a compelling sonic experiment, it's one with no discernable resolution-- at just over 45 minutes, the record is short enough that it can easily be fully absorbed in one sitting, but it can also be unbearably tiring, too misleading and smoky to feel like a particularly honest or persuasive offering.
