Begin Civil Twilight
Mike Newmark | Tarzana, CA United States | 04/23/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Despite four years of recording inactivity and five months of delays, Auburn Lull's Begin Civil Twilight makes it seem as though the time that passed between their previous album, Cast from the Platform (2004), and this one didn't actually happen. The Michigan space-rock scene, which peaked around 1999 before fading from view, prided stasis both in its music and its musical evolution, keeping that gossamer guitar-meets-electronics sound suspended in a kind of indie rock formaldehyde while dozens of other genres took center stage. Even scene-founders Mahogany tried other things, branching out into hipster rock with decidedly mixed results. So hearing Auburn Lull pick up pretty much where they left off on Cast from the Platform can feel like receiving a call from an old friend, one you didn't realize you missed until hearing the voice come through over the wires.
Nine years after their debut and high-water mark Alone I Admire, Auburn Lull show no signs of entropy in the studio. If anything, their sound is richer in the hills and more delicate in the valleys than it has ever been--a seeming impossibility when their previous songs have been some of the most confoundingly mellifluous in indie rock. Their instrumental setup is astonishing: bi-amped speakers, microphones set up all around the room, and more delay pedals and reverberation processors than you can shake a stick at. Mahogany singer/guitarist Andrew Prinz--Auburn Lull's producer since the very beginning--edits and edits the proceedings, then runs them through a 16-channel mixer to achieve a broad range of dynamics. Thankfully, Prinz still knows how to produce this lushly symphonic band even as his main act has grown increasingly stark, and his touch (and equipment) helps to leach away sharp edges and undue noise. Auburn Lull may call themselves "sound collagists," but Begin Civil Twilight is much more of a melting pot than a patchwork, where sounds bleed together such that it's difficult to tell what's a guitar, what's a violin, what's a bass, or even what's a drum.
This melting pot aesthetic seeps through the entirety of the record, but it reaches its apotheosis at "Grange Arcade," a song that is (in my words to a friend) "so beautiful, it should be illegal." Clean, repeated guitar strums lay down the melody at the start of the track, but when layer upon layer of creamy strings take it over, something unbelievable happens: The strumming loses its audible melodic component while retaining its rhythmic properties, becoming one with the drums that gallop languidly yet martially beneath the music. It gets better. Vocalist Sean Heenan begins to sing a verse that moves in waves along the strings' sustained current, turning a showcase for pure sound into a lullaby. I have no idea what he's saying, but he sings in familiar cadences that allow you to fill in the blanks according to the emotion he conveys. But the coup de grâce doesn't arrive until the very last moments, when the music fades and all that's left is a steady kick-drum thumping out a faint house beat that we didn't even know was there, propelling the song forward at an almost subliminal level.
It's Auburn Lull's new preoccupation with movement that sets Begin Civil Twilight slightly apart from the rest of their catalogue, despite the uniformly similar sound. Auburn Lull songs have always been beautiful--no question about that--but that beauty often came in the form of shape shifting ambience or tracks that revolved around a single motif without progressing. Begin Civil Twilight is comprised almost entirely of songs, in the verse-chorus-verse sense of the word, that don't end in the same place they begin. "November's Long Shadows" is one of their best, an elegant waltz in the vein of Beach House's Devotion that gives a Codeine-era slowcore song some gorgeously out-of-focus production. "Arc of an Outsider" begins very similarly to one of the highlights on Alone I Admire, "Blur My Thoughts Again," but the angelic and auspicious opening suggests that this song is actually going to go somewhere. And then it does.
Auburn Lull's (incremental) evolution into song-based territory is welcome, but Begin Civil Twilight falls short when the band gets too literal. "Broken Heroes" is essentially slowcore qua slowcore, with Heenan and an unidentified female vocalist imitating Alan and Mimi Sparhawk over a melody that never achieves liftoff. Both "Coasts" and "Light Through the Canopy" suffer as a result of Heenan's voice unencumbered; it fits the music wonderfully when lent the Prinz production treatment, but it isn't terribly sonorous on its own and reveals Heenan's limited range.
Three mediocre songs to about seven outstanding ones is still a ratio that leaves Begin Civil Twilight as one of Auburn Lull's best records, and is all the better for its sonic contiguity with the rest of the band's discography. Thirteen years after their formation, Auburn Lull haven't lost sight of what's plain gorgeous despite space rock's lack of vogue in 2008. There's nothing inherently "late-'90s" about anything they create; after all, how can something that hits all of the brain's pleasure centers ever go stale? There are changes on this album but that's not the point; we return to Auburn Lull because they present and embody a singular sound, reflecting natural terrestrial phenomena through morphing textures and tectonic melodies while their space rock peers just focus on space. Twilight ends up being a pitch-perfect reference point for this record: It's a period of flux, but for a few brief moments it's possible to marvel at it as though it could stretch on for hours. Likewise, Begin Civil Twilight is always moving, but Auburn Lull present the illusion of stillness so that we may step inside and immerse ourselves in the album's myriad wonders. It's a beautiful thing."
Let it linger
Bernard Mickey Wrangle | Plano, TX USA | 02/13/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"The Lull is a band ruled by Aether. The substance of their music is born from the earth, but by its voluminous lightness it is automatically lifted into the sky to join patterns of deep air. This is the realm in which Begin Civil Twilight is first introduced to the listener, in the form of planes of wide winds gradually swooping in all directions within the atmosphere like a macrocosmic leaf fainting back and forth between clouds. Shimmery percussion, neon guitaring and Heenan's gentle chantings are merely thoughtful, grasping comments that succumb to the ascension of the ethereal machine.
Begin Civil Twilight is more comparable to Alone I Admire for its less sharply drawn divisions between songs and more diaphanously woven cloth of sound. While Cast from the Platform (still the Lull's most focused and original album) provides songs that stand definitively alone, each song of BCT seems to linger momentarily in the beginning notions of the following song, and one seems to travel throughout the album in a state of perpetual buoyancy. This sensation takes full effect in the heart-dropping "November's Long Shadows," which I believe serves as the album's centerpoint as the music reaches it's highest altitude. "Stanfield Echo" is BCT wading momentarily above the clouds just before the edge of outerspace. "Coasts" marks BCT's gradual descension back to earth as it is tapped downward from above with smooth, quickly raining pearls of drippy light. "Geneva" marks a return to shorter-wave radio altitude as faint emissions are picked up. The land becomes more substantial as Heenan refers to earth-bound remembered empty and crowded rooms in "Arc of an Outsider." The Lull make landing in BCT's hidden track, whose acoustic theme, timber-like violin bowing, and harp-like plucking paints the picture of the end of a dream, a long, patient and thoughtful sigh; it manifests an image of a previously lifted person being settled gently back upon the ground to wanderingly return in reminiscent delay to their wooden house. The winds stream through the finality of the song as a reminder of the transient journey.
Small anomalies include occasional female backing vocals that recall the sentimentality of Slowdive or Chapterhouse, and an Ulrich Schnauss visitation on "Coasts" that continues his reign as the Electro-gazer king (I highly recommend his A Strangely Isolated Place, whose "In All the Wrong Places" marks a transcendental peak in electronic music).
The most original part of Begin Civil Twilight involves its first few tracks, which subtly hints of newly discovered territory. While I think "November's Long Shadows" is BCT's best track, painting a vivid and dusky bittersweet ambience, the album's latter portion tends to rely a little too heavily on overused chord progressions or seemingly unfinished ideas. Paradoxically, while BCT encapsulates a delicate, singular flow, after multiple listenings it seems as if the album was pieced together randomly.
Every Auburn Lull album is both monastically clear and a somnambulant blur. Their form is the sound of language being stripped down into emotional suggestions, great, streaming sighs of pain, wonder and relief. Their motto is a thread growing out of the soil, seamed through your pointer-finger and up above your head as it wobbles to a white flag waving in the purest cubic foot of earthly air. Their effect is a half-waking vacation from the strains of the demanding concrete world. Forget yourself in this music. Forget the margins of present, material life. Remember the sky. And dream of the light that comes from outerspace.
*Recommended accompaniment:
Hammock--"Kenotic"
July Skies--"The English Cold";"Dreaming of Spires"
The Radio Dept.--"Pet Grief"
Sigur Ros--"( )"
P.S. The Lull deserve correct display of their album cover.
"
Track Listings (11) - Disc #1