release - boduf songs - this alone above all else in spite of everything

type: album

released: 6th september 2010

label: kranky

genre: folk, slowcore, singer/songwriter

Though Mat Sweet has broadened his sound dramatically for this cryptically titled fourth album, his minimal instincts are as present as ever. The drums, bass and electric guitar never overpower the bleak lyrics, exposed in full on the album cover. Instead, they accentuate the despair in his rich voice, the set up of a single microphone allowing the two elements of the sound to coalesce.

There are heavier moments to be found, but nothing is as hard-hitting as the opening lines of Bought Myself a Cat O'Nine, lit up by gentle and melancholy piano. Sung in a beautifully hushed way the line "my hammer feels the urge, to nail you to the ground" sounds all the more imposing, giving power to the slight increase in pressure on the piano keys that follows. This lyrical theme is continued throughout the album, right until "the hammer cracks my skull for the last time". This dark and surreal relationship is played out over the album's length, with the changes in melody kept to a claustrophobic minimum.

One moment of surprising force is Decapitation Blues, where words gradually become whispers, hanging over a foreboding vibraharp and pulsing electronics that fade in an out as bass guitar begins to take hold. Seemingly out of nowhere the dynamic changes and a drum roll welcomes in crunchy distortion that dares to do musically what he's been doing lyrically for years, and the vocals rise again as if nothing has changed. There is no jarring effect – the shift feels totally natural, and Sweet is completely at home in this bluesy psychedelia.

Several of the songs here achieve more or less the same thing stylistically and emotionally. They are menacing pieces of brooding songwriting, with enough variation to keep them from sounding too similar – a sometimes valid criticism of his earlier albums. There is the jazzy atmosphere of Absolutely Null and Utterly Void, the crisp post-rock guitar towards the end of They Get On Slowly and the sparse harmonics of slow-burner The Giant Umbilical Cord That Connects Your Brain to the Centre.

Perhaps the most intimate song is the closer I Am Going Away and Never Coming Back, which for all its title suggests actually sounds the most hopeful and optimistic on the album. It's morbid but comforting, with promises of "I will be here for you" sitting alongside more talk of cracked skulls. This balance of ugliness and beauty finds its footing in a perfect summation of the album as the acoustic guitar is fading away: "I'll stay with you until the blood has drained from you completely". I feel he's going to be waiting a long time.

Boduf Songs - Decapitation Blues