Threefifty
- Gently Among the Coals
Threefifty
has already, in a brief amount of time, established themselves as one of the
most intelligent modern units today. The eight piece collective is anchored by
its two founding members, Geremy Schulick and Brett Parnell, and their
exploratory spirit is embodied by the restless creativity driving each of the
band’s releases. They’ve done a nearly unparalleled job of evolving from their
early classical inclinations into something more accessible, in some ways, but
possessing an unique sound quite unlike anything you’ll hear in the modern
marketplace. There’s no question that Threefifty have made a concerted effort
to broach new territory with this release and the twelve songs that have
resulted from their hard work testifies to their success. Gently Among the Coals
has musical, literary, and vocal beauty galore.
The
breadth of color in their music is simply astonishing. Threefifty, for all
intents and purposes, should be foremost considered as a collective with the
aforementioned founding members, along with Jennifer Stock, as the collective’s
artistic and spiritual center. They never fail to play as a cohesive, fully
realized band. “Crossing State Lines” is an audacious beginning to the album
and fully of metaphorical possibilities. It certainly does conjure visions of
wide open American vistas in the middle of nowhere, but there’s an unlikely
pastoral beauty to the piece as well. It is a quality that listeners will find
recurrent on Gently Among the Coals. One of the album’s indisputable high
points comes with the poignant and poetic number “Allegiance”. Vicki Kennelly
Stock, mother of band member Jennifer Stock, wrote the lyrics and the musical
adaptation of her text never dilutes the power of her words or seems arbitrary.
Instead, one informs the other and it makes for one of the album’s most
powerful artistic statements. “Andromeda” is another of the album’s finest
moments. The construction of the song, undoubtedly, will attract much notice as
it has rousing orchestration dialing up the intensity from the first, but doing
so with such steely patience that the wait for the tune to fully realize itself
begets its own sort of delicious tension.
“Until
Our Hearts Give Out” is accurately described as a love song. There’s an upward
swing to everything the instrumentation does and its tasteful electronic
underpinning allows the string instruments to flesh out the top line melody
with an extraordinary depth of color. There’s a meditative quality to certain
passages, as well, that resolve themselves with a number of gripping
mini-crescendos. There’s a thin air of foreboding coming from “The Door” thanks
to the slightly downcast air taken by the acoustic guitars, but additional
instrumentation brightens it into a more reflective hue. It’s the album’s
second Vicki Kennelly Stock lyric and has a much more elliptical quality than
the more specific “Allegiance”. The vocals and occasional harmonies exude an
ethereal quality quite in keeping with the song’s subject. They adopt a wide
variety of melodic approaches in this song and all of them are successful.
Gently Among the Coals dispenses with guitar entirely on its finale “Freedmen”.
This is a haunted, but utterly beautiful, piece relying a lot on nearly ambient
instrumentation. A song, gradually, emerges – tenuous, but reverential. It
might seem an unlikely curtain for Threefifty’s latest release, but it’s in
keeping with the album’s adventurous soul.
9/10
Stars
Lydia
Hillenburg
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