11/10/2023 0 Comments Dredg leitmotif![]() ![]() Squeezy as the anomaly, the joker in the pack which doesn't fit alongside the rest of the band's work, but by now, surely the time has come to admit that, whichever dredg album you hold aloft as their crowning achievement, and whatever trajectory you think they have followed during their time as a band, there's just a chance it's never been building to anything at all. The temptation is to pass off Chuckles & Mr. Even vocalist Gavin Hayes doesn't sound any more like he knows why he's carrying that trademark downbeat hum of his. The motifs are banal and stagnant the lyrics are five or six notches beneath unassuming to the point that they mean nothing at all. But the lethargy within these tracks is not a calculated one, it is a lazy one, certainly in effect, if not in process. And don't get me wrong here, it's not about the tempo of these songs dredg have always done melancholy well, and sadness better. The twenty-second passage of almost dead air at the start of undeniable stand-out (not exactly the award of the millennium) 'The Ornament' is the sort of thing you could easily see being documented as an artistic stroke of genius on an album more vital, more invigorated than this. Squeezy is at most junctures an exercise in remaining focussed. And none of theses songs bubble with any sort of intensity at all listening to Chuckles & Mr. ![]() Guitar crescendos have been eschewed in favour of taps and clicks. But drummer Dino Campanella has been by-and-large replaced by a machine. All of this might seem like a glorious artistic statement were the things that tied them together not so goddamn tepid. But it's fundamentally about re-defining these terms: minimalist as empty weird as out-of-place uncomfortable as awkward. Chuckles is about minimalism, which the band have always been good at it's about weird pop hooks, which have always appeared in one form or another it's about uncomfortable lyricism, another endearing component part of everything from Leitmotif through to Pariah. No, the overwhelming response to the musical aesthetic of Chuckles is as underwhelming as they come: But the trouble is that Chuckles doesn't evoke a response similar to anything else in the band's back catalogue in terms of amplitude. ![]() Which is not to say it was destined to be a carbon-copy of either Catch Without Arms or El Cielo the band have proven with ample tenacity that they're not exactly prone to sitting still. ![]() Squeezy was supposed to be the chapter that finally revealed whether dredg were in the midst of penning a thriller or a comedy, where the key elements of their identity were unveiled. Pariah was a creeper of a record which did absolutely nothing to answer the riddle and so people continued to ask: who actually are dredg?Ĭhuckles & Mr. Then Catch Without Arms screwed up the dynamic with simplified structures and sparkling choruses and it was all of a sudden impossible to say with any conviction whether El Cielo had been a point of departure or an anomaly or any part of a recognisable trend at all. Leitmotif came first, but it was 2002's El Cielo which formed the canyon, harbouring an ominous atmosphere which had the cults clamouring for their classic status labels even before anybody had realised how oddly elusive the songwriting was. People have never been able to agree whether people agreed about dredg. Review Summary: Serving as the poster-child for streaming an album prior to purchase. ![]()
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