AMG snippet:
Glasgow band Aereogramme?s new album is an intensely rewarding experience: the literate flair of the song writing,
effortlessly matched by the project?s musical ambition and creative scope. Aereogramme are no strangers to ambition
of course ? an entirely self-sufficient collective who write, record and produce their own material, with a film and
television composer in their ranks ? their previous albums have always been visceral, emotional and inspiring affairs.
It?s with their new album though, that Aereogramme have found their most compelling form and, through trusting their
instincts have produced their most accessible work to date.
?My Heart Has A Wish That You Would Not Go? is Aereogramme?s first full-length album since ?Sleep And Release? in 2003
and mini-album ?Seclusion? in 2004. It will be preceded by a single, ?Barriers? on January 22nd 07. The product of a
ferocious creativity, flawlessly executed. Aereogramme have created an album that, while paying homage to the films
that inspired it, effortlessly showcases the talents of a band at the peak of their powers.
Review by Jeff Tamarkin
My Heart Has a Wish That You Would Not Go doesn't quite abandon the directions taken on 2004's Seclusion EP or the previous year's full-length, psych-metallic Sleep and Release -- the overall extravagance remains, and Aereogramme still reaches for the sky -- but it does signal a turn toward a more thoughtful, artistically ambitious sound than before, not just maintaining the Scottish neo-prog quartet's penchant for forward movement but catapulting them out of minor-league status. Only half-a-dozen years earlier, on their 2001 debut A Story in White, Aereogramme was weighted down with elephantine guitars, bloated, plodding rhythms and an overcrowded production. Since then they've progressively relaxed a bit more each time out, thinking on a grander scale texturally but reserving their desire for grandiosity in favor of increasingly complex song structures, more expansive instrumentation and judicious use of the space and time at their disposal. My Heart Has a Wish is awash in opulent strings, dramatic keyboards and multi-layered vocals, at times so thick as to tread on symphonic Moody Blues/Pink Floyd territory and at others airy and earnestly ambling in a Coldplay/Radiohead sort of way. Vocalist Craig B. is less self-conscious than on past efforts, transformed into a truly engaging frontman in total command on showpiece tracks such as "Nightmares" and "Barriers," and dynamic and radiant on the more delicately constructed "Exits" and "Finding a Light."
Aereogramme
My Heart Has a Wish That You Would Not Go
[Chemikal Underground/Sonic Unyon; 2007]
Rating: 5.9
Scotland's Aereogramme has always purported a metal/punk/emo identity crisis with flair, but on the follow-up to their beautiful EP Seclusion, the conviction behind their mood swings has itself gone diffident. This LP has its corseted moments of elegance totaling about two and a half tracks, but the verbosity of the title is a premonition of what's filling in the gaps. The majority of Heart is a sulky melting pot of all the elements we admire of this group. In between the whines and montages, they wedge themselves nicely into their own respectably mixed-up genre. But for the first time, there is an affectation for which there appears to be no balance of virtuosity.
The twinkling guitars and smoke-and-mirrors drum thumps of tracks like "Trenches" and "Nightmares" are paired with washes of lyrical melodrama that get lost in the tantrum. Long, repeated phrases like "I love you but I can't let you go" and "My head is caving in" are drowned by the lachrymose thunderstorm of drum, string, and bass raining down on pretty much the entire album. There are too many special effects surrounding the messages-- Craig B's penchant for preadolescent vocals included. Most of the time it's hard to feel anything but ornery, as a full-grown person being swaddled by an overbearing mother (or boyfriend).
There is a sense that even diehard fans will find something amiss here: loudest moments too depressive, quiet moments too timid. The guitar and violin phrasing on opener "Conscious Life for Coma Boy" are uninspired, with a stifling range and underdeveloped melody. It's nothing like previous openers-- the abrasive punk of Sleep and Release's "Indiscretion #243" or Seclusion's triumphant "Inkwell". Scattered songs are increasingly opaque shades of the same: the percussive strings on "Finding A Light", or the stock piano round of "Barriers", both of which fail to lure. The production here is cleaner, giving the soft instrumentation and happy major keys ample room to breathe. But it was the muddled, invasive and sinister quality of the band's last two releases that finessed a hodgepodge to such delightful effect.
What the band can still do with delicacy is, perhaps, all the more worth noting. "Exits" also refrains from the winding, explorative melodies of yore, but the descending three-note piano loop, its echo in the electric guitar, and the primer of a string section are something even great cynics will find inescapably lovely. Late entry "The Running Man", with its dripping, urgent synth line and boundless, atmospheric bass, is original and highly addictive. Together with "Exits", it's the heart and soul of the album, the impervious voice in a crowd of pomp and fluff.
-Liz Colville, January 26, 2007
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