THE i-mockery YSI thread!

[iron mitchell]

Charalambides - Joy Shapes

h!!p://s64.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=10F14YY90196S3OJYOOEKMMSQ4

"What is it about the Charalambides that is so affecting? It's nearly impossible to pin down, something that's more conceptual than tangible. Every time I put one of their records on, I always get drawn in and, before I know it, it's an hour later and the record is over. Tom and Christina Carter show that the chemistry married couples often have can translate brilliantly to artistic expression. I don't know them personally, but just listening to how they play off each other musically and how they seem to understand the other's every move, it's a safe bet to say they were meant for each other. Let me not discount new member Heather Leigh Murray's contributions, either. This trio just continues to impress me more and more.
The highlight of "Joy Shapes" is the impact that Christina's voice leaves on the listener. She unleashes her pipes on this record in a way I've never heard. It's like a beacon of light shining through a dense foggy maze that their music embodies. Each strained note calls you closer to this wailing siren, except that she does not mean you harm. On the 22 minute epic, "Here, Not Here," she sounds empowered. She opens up over these skeletal arrangements, like a ghost whose soul has finally been freed. I can't stress how moving and unbelievable this is. And she never lets up, either. Just when it sounds like she's quieting down and taking a breath, these reverb-laced sheets of her voice come pouring back over the top of the mix. This entire track has the feel of a battered, decrepit ship sailing through dark, jagged cliffs shrouded in mist. Danger lurks around every corner, but this voice encapsulates everything and is leading the vessel to safety. Every time the track ends, I am sad. I love it when a song does that to me.
Musically, this is familiar territory for Charalambides. The Carters' arrangements have always flirted with complexity while staying firmly grounded in minimalism. It's as if the music is emaciated. The intricacy is often below the surface, like underground aquifers providing life to everything that surrounds them. On the title track, Christina Carter's voice is once again the centerpiece. As she moans, "We remembered and smiled when we met," there is something happening that is not only heartbreaking, but also strangely erotic. It's this undercurrent that makes Charalambides so damn good. Listening to this, I'm being stretched in two directions. I want to scream out, "I can't take it! You're tearing me apart!" It's no use, though. I feel like I'm hearing somebody beautifully self-destruct. Laying naked on a sheetless bed, she tries freeing herself of these demons she's been carrying for years. It's of no use, though: they have already won. A half-empty bottle of sleeping pills is spilled on the hardwood floor as she writhes and thrashes, waiting for the poison to take hold. The music is the perfect depiction of the emptiness inside. Never have I heard such an impassioned demise. Fuck, this is brilliant.
Halfway through this album, I feel worn out. It's an exhausting listen. Not because it's bad or difficult in any way, but it is so rife with emotion that as the Charalambides explore their inner demons, you are forced to examine your own. Keep that in mind before pressing play, because if you're not up for the task, it's probably best to wait and listen to this another time. Charalambides has an old soul. Like the Carpathian Mountains in Francis Ford Coppola’s version of Dracula, there is something mystifying and enchanting while at the same time completely terrifying. Your curiosity can't be helped. It must journey deep into the heart of this place and find out why, exactly, it is what it is. This is what "Joy Shapes" does. It's the most exposed I've heard a band in a long time. I've also never heard a band so comfortable in such a state. It's as if they're saying, "Yes, this is who we are. This is why we are. What the fuck is it to you?" There's a very vague '70s punk spirit here. "We do what we do and don't care what anyone thinks." Who am I to argue? The results speak for themselves.
Fans of their previous work will probably wet themselves when they first hear "Joy Shapes." This takes their already-perfected modus operandi and turns it up to 11. As they go spelunking through their collective psyche, they seem to find a place where each member is comfortable. Hope reigns supreme and blasts through the speakers on the hopeful closer, "Voice for You." If there was ever an appropriately-named song, it is this one. "Joy Shapes" follows the Charalambides on the journey to explain to themselves what they are all about. While the distorted, screaming electric guitar soars toward the heavens as "Voice for You" comes to a close, it is clear this band has it figured it out. It is obvious they have finally found their voice." - Brad Rose

"Joy Shapes, pregnant with an intense stasis and nocturnal elegance, is Charalambides’ most intimate offering yet. Five songs hedge a path, which shall take seventy-five minutes to pass through, yet demand frequent visits before unveiling all of its many secrets.
Surrounded by Joy Shapes undulating fields, the sight which most arrests are the dynamic and harmonic ranges being battered by Christina Carter’s jarring alto—her elliptical lyrics and insatiable cries being recorded in what Tom Carter could only describe as a “lost evening”. On “Here Not Here”, wordless vocal tone clusters seep out through skeletal arrangements of lap steel, bells, and wood wand, whilst moaning chimes teeter awkwardly, barely keeping balance, their staggering shifts staining the air with uneasiness. Though still rather timid, “Joy Shapes” is the most approachable progeny Charalambides have spawned in some time. Carter exhales a melancholy lullaby with guitar textures slumbering in a soft bed of resonant drones. As the piece sallies on, Tom Carter’s guitar grapples with Murray’s psaltery like a river rolls pebbles. “Natural Night”, meanwhile, adds new colour with brittle chimes crackling like crushed glass, gradually bleeding into dissonance. Carter’s voice looms in the shadows here, adding dimension and tonal possibility. After thirteen minutes of harsh chimes and sharp tones running the length of each other like knives being sharpened, a meek coda of whistling bells feels like crawling into a melodic duvet.
Each of these long, winding musical passages marry disciplined understatement to the sense of a disturbingly naked reality, indeed, they float about their guests like the ghost of Hamlet’s father: a gloomy phantom that communicates without speaking. “Voice For You”, is a reedy lap steel wandering through a labyrinth of long squealing tones, with gritty electric guitar reverberating overhead like a rock waiting to fall. Amid Carter’s a cappella, which shifts into a poignant banshee wail, lovely chance occurrences of displacement and empty space are stumbled upon and lend the proceedings an air of spontaneity.
Carter’s voice, which sounds like an instrument being tortured, is slowly treated so that it washes into the whirling tones and cacophonic scrapes which carry the album to its end.
If there is something alien about Joy Shapes it is not in the face of the otherworldly, but directly in the face of this world—the mood similar to the existentialism of Sartre or Camus, as they stumble before the alien image of what they are. A milestone in the quest for insightful rapprochement between composition and improvisation, Joy Shapes is an incredibly opulent and worryingly irresistible album indeed." -Max Schaefer