Kayo Dot plays in drips and torrents. The violin's tweaking high notes and the cautious breath noises from the trumpet hint at a crisis that hits with full force when the heavy metal half of the band crashes in, loud and without warning. Frontman Toby Driver may look like he weighs 90 pounds wet but his delicate, wounded-doe croon can whip into a head-squeezing shriek. The band's combination of chamber instruments, psychedelia and metal gives it an almost delusional appeal, like absinthe chased with Genny Cream Ale, or the sparks you see on your eyelids when someone clocks you in the head. Church-burners and 10-year-old boys may think they're soft, and sometimes they struggle to find the right balance between both sides of the band. But if you like your violence framed by surreal mumbojumbo, you may find them awe-awakening; the slow sections are suspenseful, and the climaxes will make your hair jump off your head.
This Boston band, formed by ex-members of Maudlin of the Well, debuted with 2003's excellent Choirs of the Eye. This year's follow-up, Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue, is more methodical: the quality's more consistent, but they've lost Choirs' crazy highs and lurching segues. Kayo Dot has toured with both Khanate and Cerberus Shoal, and you can hear similitarities to both bands: Songs like "Immortelle and Paper Caravelle" have grave-like patience and small, scratchy gestures, while the strings and trumpet fuel a proggy instrumental on "Aura on an Asylum Wall", until a noisy outburst cuts it off. And the album's centerpiece, "__ On Limpid Form", drags you through a 13-minute death knell with guitars that groan like a bridge taking all day to collapse.
Driver has strengthened the two extremes of his singing-- blissed-out, or drawn and quartered-- and although the vocal passages are brief, they frame a satisfying release. He also uses his voice briefly and eerily on his solo debut from last fall, In the L..L..Library Loft, a more somnolent take on Kayo Dot's style. This one's on Tzadik, and yes, it's yet another in that label's non-stop catalog of horror soundtrack-style records-- but Driver handles the task well, and he delivers an engrossing, cinematic production that features Kayo Dot's Forbes Graham on trumpet and Mia Matsumiya on violin, tuning forks, and "two-tongue vocal." Tracks one and four especially are the keepers: "Eptaceros" delivers an entrancing exchange between Driver's voice and Graham's trumpet, while opener "Kandu vs. Corky (Horrorca)" scales the same molten heights as Kayo Dot, but with an all-chamber ensemble and two cavernous drummers pushing it forward. On this cut, you get the scale of metal without the rock beat or the attack-- leaving just the glory of cascading guitar noise and throat-wringing passion. As Pinhead would say, it's "pain and pleasure, indivisible."
