Husky Rescue – Ship of Light (Catskills)
4/5
By: Hayley Sleigh
Listening to each song on Husky Rescue’s fourth album individually, it is much easier to appreciate the variety featured on Ship of Light, with the melancholic power pop of ‘Sound of Love’ with its deliciously catchy chorus and the country-flavoured ‘Fast Lane’ with its bells and duelling guitars among the most distinctive. The ten tracks on Ship of Light are bound together by a feeling, not a sound or a set of instruments, and played together are far greater than the sum of their parts, as the wistful mood the album lulls you into is so wonderful. Each song, beautiful as it was, left only the faintest imprint in my mind, like a dream lost and mostly forgotten, where all that remains is the memory that it must have been quite lovely.
There is a pleasing, childlike simplicity to the rhymes (‘children come to ask/why do I wear a mask’ on ‘Man of Stone’, and ‘playing hide and seek/someone to take a peek’ on ‘When Time Was On Their Side’) which would sound cloyingly weak if they weren’t echoed so perfectly by the choice of instruments (unless my ears are deceiving me, there’s a xylophone and a triangle in there somewhere on ‘We Shall Burn Bright’ and ‘Sound of Love’).
Lead vocalist Reeta-Leena Korhola sings with Charlotte Gainsbourg-like precision, art-ic-u-lat-ing ev-e-ry litt-le frag-ment of every word with such clarity that it serves to make the hazy atmosphere each track creates feel even warmer and fuzzier in comparison. There’s something so intimate about hearing every click of Korhola’s tongue as she sings, as if she’s singing directly into your ear. I would suggest that the band’s decision to record a song that’s so reminiscent of C. Gainsbourg’s ‘Little Monsters’ and call it ‘Beautiful My Monster’ indicates more of a direct homage than just a well-embraced, often-heard comparison.
A number of people (including Husky Rescue’s own writer/bassist/producer Marko Nyberg) have likened Husky Rescue’s debut album, 2004’s Country Falls, to the work of David Lynch, while I think Ship of Light would be a better accompaniment to one of Michel Gondry’s films. Irresistibly sweet and gentle with a faintly disturbing thread running throughout (the cosmic distortion of Korhola’s voice on ‘Beautiful My Monster’ and the synth sounds dropping and spinning out of control on ‘Grey Pastures, Still Waters’ are mildly unsettling, in a good way), Ship of Light would be the perfect soundtrack to a month spent falling in love and building oceans made of cotton wool with stunningly mousy French women while battling a mysterious illness which leaves you unable to tell the difference between dreams and reality, a la The Science of Sleep. This is music to fall in love with, and to.
Artists in this article: Husky Rescue
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