320 kbps | 90 MB | LINKS
‘Time Elastic’ is the second album from Laish. Though their music has a foundation in folk (many of the songs start with little more than singer Danny Green’s voice and an acoustic guitar), there is also ambition which sees them incorporating strings, brass and, as might be anticipated on a song called ‘Listening for God’, gospel singers.
Green’s own voice has a rather dry, limited range which may work for listeners who go for an intimate, conversational style. It comes over best on ‘I Would Prefer Not to’, a lament for an alcoholic friend who wants company in their misery. But it’s rather unconvincing on ‘The Fox’, where we’re asked to believe that Green is riven by savage passions that he struggles to keep in check.
The early part of the album is slow-paced and the songs – ‘Sand is Shifting’ and ‘Love is Growing’- initially quite stark, but in time adding subtle colour through strings and horns. Some of the lyrics have a poetic feel (e.g. on ‘Listening for God’ : “Alone among the stars/Sailing out to sea”), but the generally word-heavy approach allows little space for musical stretching out (a brief but effective guitar solo on the title track being the main exception). As a result, the constant demand for rhymes can lead to cliches or awkward phrasing (e.g “When I leave I must be sure/That love is growing more” – surely, if love is growing, there must be “more” of it).
‘Listening for God’ has a vaguely country feel, the verses delivered in a subdued manner though there is some spark of passion on the chorus as guitar, organ and backing singers throw in their weight. Unfortunately this doesn’t last and the track keeps retreating to the same low-key level. You wonder what a Nick Cave could do with its sentiments of spiritual search.
The record is then boosted over several songs with a welcome, though still somewhat lukewarm, burst of energy. ‘Blink of an Eye’ is mid-tempo pop-rock, guitar-led with organ and strings hovering in the background. It does have a certain catchy charm, but this is undercut by too much lyrical repetition which in the end just becomes irritating. ‘Dance to the Rhythm’ is a deliberately disposable pop song about trying to contrive a commercial pop song. Despite its knowing character, it ironically ends up being one of the album’s most exciting tracks.
‘Time Elastic’ itself is concerned with the power of a traumatic memory (in this case an attack by “drooling dogs”) to keep pinging back into the present to pull you with it into the past. Melodically it’s another memorable track, but also another marred by excessive repetition, where what passes for a chorus consists almost entirely of the title sung over and over again. Maybe this is conceptually apt, but it’s still labouring the point.
‘Devil’s Advocate’ returns to the downbeat feel of the opening tracks, but is followed by ‘University’, whose rhythm, strings, bright backing singers and tambourine add up in many ways to a good pastiche of Sixties pop. But again it has the lyrical faults of facile rhymes (“I was eighteen/But I didn’t care/I was eighteen/With very long hair”) and banal repetition, with a chorus that consists simply of the line “I’ve been to university” sung four times in succession. Higher education doesn’t seem to have done much for the writer’s vocabulary.
If this album was a student, it might be felt enough work had been put in to merit a degree. But if some thought is given to the outstanding candidates of the past (such as Dylan, Beatles, Stones, Bowie, Joy Division, Depeche Mode) it might well suggest a prime example of grade inflation.
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