School of Seven Bells – Alphinisms Review
Given the pseudo krautrock guitar work he displayed in his former band, The Secret Machines, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to anticipate Benjamin Curtis channeling the sonic mojo of Michael Rother in his new three-piece, School of Seven Bells, but as the first bars of the opening track “Iamundernodisguise” introduces Alpinisms with the combined chant of two vocalists who unfortunately sing in the same ethereal tone as the saccharine pop outfit The Corrs, hopeful expectations are soon annihilated in the first few seconds. Thankfully, when Curtis’ guitars blast into the song a tasteful equilibrium is restored and the traumatic memories of sickly vocal-styles are eradicated and the band make sense, but it’s a regrettable frame of reference to commence with.
Vocal prejudices aside, Alpinisms corresponds to the proverbial treated guitar textures and airy female voices regularly found in the shoegazer catalog and Curtis seems to be also emulating the guitar woos of Kevin Shields (”Face to Face on High Places” sounds uncannily like a remixed Loveless track). But it’s not all spaced-out guitar effects and siren-like singing, “White Elephant Coat” is bass driven old-school goth (as in graveyards and bats) and “Connjur” throbs with a post-rock momentum that’s meant to be heard on the inside of sleek cars as they float through West German landscapes of concrete and steel.
The galvanizing aspect of Alpinisms and its disparate influences comes from the electro arrangements that elevate the otherwise diluted facsimiles of experimental guitar from the musical history books. Synth textures echo along with the guitars and electronic tempos adorn all of the tracks here to make this debut more than just a means of looking backward to look forward. Even the vocals delivered by twin sisters, Alejandra and Claudia Deheza surpass the too appeasing by far timbres employed by the thousands of fluffy soon-to-be-forgotten pop bands, when the choral layers develop into musical mantras or are fed through a vocoder. School of Seven Bells may take their name from a well-known institution where pickpockets learn their nefarious trade, but as much as the separate ingredients of the Alpinisms recipe regurgitate the familiar, there’s little here that comes across as downright stealing.
School of Seven Bells – Face to Face on High Places
School of Seven Bells – Connjur
Tags: album
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