His Name Is Alive - Detrola (Silver Mountain)
4/5
By: Chris O'Toole
After a four year hiatus His Name Is Alive returns. Having spent the intervening period producing the likes of Iggy and the Stooges, Low and Yoko Ono, His Name Is Alive mainstay Warn Defever sought a return to the creative side of music. Bursting with ideas after the longest break in the groups 20 year career, Defever formed a new ensemble to begin the recording of 'Detrola'. The results presented here suggest this to be a wise move. Detrola is an ethereal, iridescent collage of tempos, styles and textures, broad and scope and achievement.
His Name Is Alive here adopts a principally synthesised sound, but not limiting themselves to formulaic structures, instead incorporating diverse instrumentation and construction. The resulting feel of the album is never far from feathery, full of a soft radiance and glow, seamlessly illuminating the darkest hours. Overwhelming optimism fills even the darker moments of 'Detrola'. Comparisons are possible with M83, Animal Collective or Manitoba, but none are absolute, as His Name Is Alive constantly evolve, shedding skin after skin and consistently emerging in new and increasingly beautiful forms.
The albums introduction only hints at the direction of the recoding as a whole with the vocal contribution of Andy FM pushed into the foreground, atop a mournful string accompaniment. After, apparently, drinking water from a plant pot with Andy at a house party and hearing her sing a number of Elvis covers, Defever decided to record an album with her. This decision is more than justified throughout 'Detrola' as her involvement grows to characterise, if not dominate, the album. After the introduction's inauspicious beginning to the journey, 'After I Leave You' sees the group begin to stretch their production muscles constructing an intricate, energetic composition; manipulating simple electronic glitches and bleeps into a variety of forms to create a landscape reminiscent of a picturesque nightmare.
'I Thought I Saw' begins with a slinky guitar introduction before giving way to the bravura playing of Faruq Z. These saxophone contributions grow to become a further key element of the album, along with Defever's production and Andy TM's vocals. Throughout the album His Name Is Alive never lose sight of their pop sensibilities and 'I Thought I Saw' is no expectation, filled with melodic hooks and vocal eddies which draw the listener ever closer to the spirit of the recording. 'In My Dream' follows, taking a slightly more bombastic tone, and features perhaps the strongest vocal contribution; Andy TM here virtually crooning with the voice of a twenty a day angel to create a sound part seductive, part destructive and never anything short of magical.
'C*A*T*S' returns to the more electronic side of Defever's repertoire, offering a lament to loss over a fizzing, bouncing beats. 'Your Bones' follows in the coattails with a lightly strummed guitar, as cooling and refreshing as summer rain, building to a blissful chorus. Accompanied by a mantra like whispered chant the track is at once modern and ageless, seeming to carry the weight of experience, but none of the burden of mistakes and regret.
'You Need a Heart' is next, with the gurgling electronics setting a leisurely pace and the vocal track following accordingly. Listlessly wandering in no particular direction, the track walks along on the back of a taught bass-line and is accompanied by further minimal saxophone melodies. A further highlight of the album is provided by 'You And Me' which begins as a small scale apocalypse, before moving into a virtual waltz before kicking up its heel to become a fully fledged pop song. Animated piano and drum elements combine to create a relatively high tempo mix, giving free rein to a spirited vocal melody which grows to dominate the track. Finally the penultimate 'Seven Minutes' reveals itself as a light weight electro-funk ditty before 'Send My Face' closes the album.
'Detrola' is a majestic album, never moving at anything other than its own measured pace and taking in mixture of styles; constantly rearranging the jigsaw puzzle pieces to create ever more illuminating pictures The accomplishment of the musicians over such a range is breathtaking, eloquently incorporating folk, electro and soul, all filtered through a warped sense of pop music to create a exceptional blend. The album draws from the musical palette at leisure and is full of scope and liberated thinking, outside of simple classification, and emerges as effortlessly cool without seeking to be so.
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