Available at Amazon Japan
| Lillies And Remains - Part Of Grace |
| God
knows there's no shortage of post punk inspired bands out there. While
it's heartening to see the scene get its influential due, one can't
help but be a little dispirited at how hollow many of the new groups
have been: mostly, they've aped the sonics, the vocals, and the
fashion. While that's not necessarily a deal breaker (assuming the
group in question adds their own substance to the stew, which many
have) I've always been a bit disappointed that of all the acolytes,
nobody's really been able to truly evoke post punk's sense of uncanny
dread: an otherworldly, macabre, theatrical undertow that (to my ears,
anyway) found its most complete manifestation in Joy Division's Closer
and early Bauhaus. Lillies and Remains took their name, among other things, from early Bauhaus (a track off their masterpiece Mask, to be precise,) so it shouldn't be a surprise that they've succeeded in areas where many of their like minded peers have fallen short. Part Of Grace, the band's debut full length (following a 2008 EP,) is darkly atmospheric in ways I just haven't heard in the Interpols and Editors of the world. Like Bauhaus' Mask, there's an occasional sense that Lillies and Remains aren't a band so much as a collective of ghosts, at turns malignant, darkly beautiful, and even catchy as all Hell when the mood strikes. Which is not to say the band don't have a boatload of sonic similarities with their peers, most notably Bloc Party's spare, clean guitars and Franz Ferdinand's stiff funk. But the more upbeat moments aside (they sound downright happy on the title track,) there's a smoothly sinister cast to vocalist Kent's delivery: stylishly unemotional with an understated cool that is a massive gust of fresh air in the overly, often cheesily emotive Japanese scene. His voice on "Solitude Of Vigour" never rises above a monotone, but it's a cool monotone that emphasizes the tight storm the band kicks up around him. Other bands may shoot for a theatrical gloom, but "Solitude Of Vigour" gains its power from the undersell. And Kent…dude sounds like Dracula. The band isn't lifeless, not by a long stretch, but they can often seem, well, undead. The contrast…Kent's sweatless murmuring against the energetic machinery of the music…is Lillies and Remains' strongest asset, and POG is most successful when it sticks to that combo. "Moralist S.S." (which made an appearance on the 2008 EP) is a perfect example: the sneering vocals almost (almost) make it easy to miss how powerful the guitar riffage really is. "Upsetter," for reasons I can't put my finger on for the life of me, evokes early Mission (or even earlier Sisters Of Mercy.) But where those two bands (well, one band, really) would eagerly go over the top, Lillies and Remains never let the exterior crack, a restraint that finds just the right balance between passion and aloof cool. All that said, the dark elements shouldn't be oversold. There's a healthy dose of new wave as well that's more Depeche Mode than Death In June, most obviously on the two remixes that close the album. "The Fake," as a remix, is pleasant if a bit creatively lazy: it's really the same track with an shiny extra layer of synths. Utilitarian as it may be, it does bring out the underlying synth pop influences in a band that isn't particularly electronic, and as such, does offer a genuinely new perspective. "Wreckage" gets a more thorough remaining, taking the hazy drift of the original and refitting it inside a bright, crisp, Vincent Clarke style synth jacket. Part Of Grace points to a cautiously optimistic future for the Lillies and Remains. There's something in there that belongs to the band, and their usage of their clear influences never gets stale, for the moment. But the influences are still way in the forefront, and if LAR can see their way clear to shuffle off some of those mortal coils and maintain their grasp on the effortless, spooky cool of POG's best moments, they'll do something truly remarkable. |