A Hawk & A Hacksaw - The Way The Wind Blows (The Leaf Label)
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
If unfamiliar with the work of Jeremy Barnes whether with this band or Neutral Milk Hotel, and equally clueless up to this point with regard Zack Condon and his Beirut band, your immediate reaction to 'The Way the Wind Blows' (the record, not the weather) could well be annoyance. The way it only does one thing, the way more than any other record you own it will grate at the ears if you're not in the right mood for it, things such as these can really infuriate. But don't fret. I was like this. Now I sing along to songs about ever winding rivers, dance waltzes and hum out violin parts at breakneck speed like I've never been happier. Time heals everything.
'The Way The Wind Blows' is hugely influenced by eastern European music in the sense that it's only really influenced by eastern European music. A Hawk & A Hacksaw is a band (in the loosest way) who are utterly uninterested in the workings and trappings of rock and roll. The instruments they use aren't many - percussion (rarely a full drumkit), violins, accordions, a few pieces of brass here and there. They're all layered and considered brilliantly, but it's something you won't discover if you're not willing to put in the effort. It could just sound like some Bulgarians jamming on folk music for a good few days.
It's not. There's immense structure and detail here. It certainly isn't jamming, but it does take its cues from folk music of the kind we're unlikely to have ever heard much of in our green and pleasant land. However, this is far from basic folk writing or musicianship, the kind of music that's clever and inventive enough to appeal to nerdy music snobs who can enjoy any sound from death metal to electronica so long as there's something meaty to investigate to it. The tracks often flow in to one another, as if this is an album on which you're carried on one continuous gust of wind, never passed from one to another. It sounds free, but it's not improvised - not totally anyway. Rhythmically it can change course at will - 'Fernando's Giampari' for instance, which has an imposing rattle you wouldn't want to mess with, takes the listener all over the place. 'God Bless the Ottoman Empire' however is almost funky, and a song I like to think features Count Duckula playing saxophone.
It's largely instrumental, but this becomes a blessing where it starts off as something of an obstacle when you're trying to find a way in. Eventually, the sparseness of prose emphasises the words when there are any to say, and one ends up really thinking hard for example about the phrase 'may you live every day of your life' simply because it's said twice in different songs (the first and the last - the eventually beguiling 'In The River' and it's closing sister track 'There is a River in Galsiteo'). Funny that they'd eschew vocals for much of the record however as they sing very well - incredibly creepily, but very well (especially fiendishly on 'Song For Joseph') - like they're trying to lure children off to somewhere they shouldn't go without telling their parents first.
Only the slightly unnecessary 'Waltz for Strings & Tuba' is a bit of an anomaly. I prefer to see what they're doing with the template to take it forward rather than hear how rigidly and faithfully they can stick to it, if you don't mind. Not all the instrumental stuff is needless however - the mere minute or so of 'Oporto' is ominously gorgeous, though it doesn't need the frog noises. 'Gadje Serba' with all its tuba pomp pomp pomping would sound like a novelty on any other record, yet here it's a deadly serious standout. The following 'The Sparrow' does pretty much the same thing but on strings, and as a couple of tracks, they're brilliant. I'm loving this more as I write about it. You get that?
If you like one bit of it, you like it all. If you don't like it, you've not listened to it enough. True, you can't revel in how every song sounds different because they really, really don't. What you can rejoice over is how different the whole project sounds from anything else you claim ownership over. People who own this record will feel less of a need to take an annual holiday, as when you listen to it, your mind is anywhere except in its current physical location (let's not get in to the materialism or otherwise of the human soul at this point - if you want to discuss that, I've got essays for you. Email me.) 'The Way The Wind Blows' is itself that wind blowing your thoughts somewhere else, somewhere you've never gone and probably will never go to, physically. No matter. Sonically, you're right in the thick of it.
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