Bell Orchestre - As Seen Through Windows (Arts & Crafts)
3/5
By: Stephen Maughan
You may have heard it said that Bell Orchestre can't be that bad as they contain three members of the Arcade Fire (Richard Reed Parry, Sarah Neufeld and Pietro Amato), so a certain amount of expectation greets this release. All the more so as it’s produced by jazz arrangement boy-wonder John McEntire (from the brilliant Tortoise), and riding on the back of gratifying praise for their debut album, 2005's Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light.
So given the talents involved in Bell Orchestre, it is some surprise therefore that As Seen Through Windows gets off to such a slow start. The first couple of tracks – particularly the opener ‘Stripes’ - are rather timid affairs where the double bass lingers a touch too long over the brass and violins.
It's a shame really, because for those of us who still ask to play CDs in record shops before buying them may well never get to the brilliance of the fourth track – a trilogy of musical minimalism entitled ‘Water/Light/Shifts’, which recalls the elegance of Rachel's in the late 1990's. And we would further miss out on the masterful 12 minute closure, ‘Air Lines Land Lines’, which starts with a 5 minute brooding violin section followed by a rushing sympathy of colour and melody, which would even impress the legendary “pocket sympathy” mastermind Brian Wilson, as well as avid Radio 3 listeners.
After saying all that, Bell Orchestre are a live band. This kind of music, like your grandparents dusty old Beethoven and Tchaikovsky records, is to be played by musicians in a hushed music hall where every note bursts to life. On the stereo, it's merely an interesting classical arrangement by some talented musicians that might start off a little weary, but soon picks up pace to offer a jazz infused classical album, with a welcome dash of the attitude of punk thrown in.
Artists in this article: Bell Orchestre
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