Review by Heather Phares
More proof that Weird America is thriving comes from Castanets' Asthmatic Kitty debut, Cathedral, an album that earns its title through its expansive sound and spiritual searching. Raymond Raposa's apocalyptic version of Americana -- which he calls "derailed psychedelic country" -- borrows from the traditions of country and folk but never sounds traditional, thanks to unusual arrangements that feature toy pianos, woozy brass, dulcimers, and clanking, arrythmic percussion alongside the more expected acoustic guitars, harmonicas, and pedal steel. The album's sound is indeed psychedelic, but in a spare, haunting way that lets the spaces in the music speak as much, if not more, than the music itself. Cathedral's songs tend bleed and blur into each other, adding to the album's half-remembered, fever-dream feel, but when moments like the feedback-laden porch jamboree "Industry and Snow" and the beautifully ghostly "You Are the Blood" arrive, they stand out all the more. There's a certain dark theatricality to the album's sound, particularly on its centerpiece tracks, "No Light to Be Found (Fare Thee Faith, the Path Is Yours)" (a breakup song that could be about the end of a relationship or a lapse in belief) and "Three Days, Four Nights." However, Cathedral sounds less contrived, and more immediately inviting, than the brooding of likeminded artists such as Will Oldham's many incarnations. Raposa's searching sounds genuine, particularly when he sings of "just waiting to be lifted up" and "the way we refuse to be saved." It's particularly effective, and affecting, on "The Smallest Bones" and "We Are the Wreckage," where he addresses God directly, but even relatively lighter songs like the gorgeous ballad "As You Do" and the brief, drum machine-driven closing track, "Cathedral 4 (The Unbreaking Branch and Song)," reveal a nearly constant questioning of faith. Though Raposa doesn't necessarily find many answers on Cathedral, his exploration of belief -- and the lack thereof -- is captivating.
Castanets
Cathedral
[Asthmatic Kitty; 2004]
Rating: 8.5
In 1975, the Irish poet Seamus Heaney published a small collection of verse, aptly titled "Bog Poems". Heavily nuanced and intensely personal, the book carefully contemplates the bizarre recovery of 2000-year old human bodies-- preserved with horrifying perfection-- from Denmark's massive bogs. Unsurprisingly, Heaney had written about these bogs before, often cataloguing the stalled, ancient objects that had been dug up, wholly unchanged, from their weird, sludgy depths.
San Diego's Castanets, whose non-CDR debut has just been released by the Asthmatic Kitty imprint, express a similar fascination with swamp-culture, and the contemporary repercussions of age-old traditions. Nodding briefly to Six Organs of Admittance and the No-Neck Blues Band, the band leers large at American country's longstanding definitions: For Castanets, country music should sound like death, and more specifically, death-by-murky-submersion.
Frontman Raymond Raposa moos his deep gothic ballads like he's dog-paddling backwards through big Florida swamps, banging his knees on knobby cypress roots, ruffling pools of duckweed and featherfoil, desperately digging Spanish moss out from his nostrils, battling hard for buoyancy. The process is slow, the water explicitly thick and unapologetically sinister, easing a dim, wet descent into Earth's impenetrable goo. But the bits Raposa brings back-- quivering promises, deadpan defeats-- are, like Heaney's un-antiquated artifacts, startlingly real.
With the help of his bandmates, Raposa's hollow, boxy vocals are set against spare funeral dirges ("Cathedral 2"), stompy guitar throwdowns ("Industry and Snow", the outstanding "Three Days, Four Nights"), and planes of free-folk ping ("You Are the Blood"). Still, Raposa's candlelit pipes are inevitably centered, shaking with loneliness and dread-- even guest vocalists Brigit DeCook and Liz Janes' murmurs and screams sound like they're coming from another room, their pale shouts muffled and heavy with desperation, chasing Raposa's grief.
Raposa does manage to pack in a few chances for air: "As You Do" takes a more traditional stab at classic, Americana-fed melancholy, with warbling slide guitar, sweet acoustic strums, and gentle percussion. Consequently, "As You Do" transforms into a gentle, rolling lament, more wheat fields than swamp scum. Closer "Cathedral 4 (The Unbreaking Branch and Song)" is fed by a sparkling backbeat and cute guitar noodles-- clocking in at just under 2? minutes, it's a fleeting glimpse of solid land.
Raposa is reportedly working on a novel that will expound on the themes of Cathedral, and such literary aspirations aren't particularly surprising, given then poetic weight of the record, which nobly grapples with issues of faith, death, splitting synapses, eating breakfast, spirits, and landscapes. And, like any good book, Cathedral the album is best suited to awkward late-night consumption, to be devoured while hiding under the sheets, clutching a flashlight, breathing heavy and deep.
-Amanda Petrusich, September 01, 2004
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