Heavy Ceiling
As I’ve explained before, I’ve always felt a bit of a disconnect between Said The Whale on stage and Said The Whale on record. Live, they’re explosive, spirited, replete with a charismatic energy that lights up the stage on its own. However, up until now, their tracks committed to tape have seemed a bit more pedestrian; songs have been as hard to get worked up about as they have been easy to like. Not always, but often. It’s not as if this rendered the band or their music forgettable by any means, but all too often the studio tunes failed to hook me in the way I knew they could if they were staged in front of an audience. On stage, everything just made more sense.
Little Mountain is a different kind of beast, and it sees the band bring their live and studio personas much closer in line with each other, to great effect. The signature saccharine melodies and flashes of heat-lightning guitar have been retained, but the band seems more confident their ability to move forwards as a cohesive unit. Specifically, the division between songwriters Tyler Bancroft and Ben Worcester is the most reconciled it’s ever been, making Little Mountain more of a singular document from its two frontmen rather than two separate voices working in parallel.
The months of spent on the road preceding this record are felt deep within these tracks, which seem less fragile and more apt to stand up to the wear-and-tear of long stretches of touring and repeat listens. There’s still room for delicacy (“Big Sky, MT”), but even the records quietest moments embrace some sense of movement and direction that are more likely to reach out grab you than to casually drift by. This uniformly scales to size for the rockers, too, which swings the range from raucous fun (“Loveless”) to supernova (“We Are 1980″, “Heavy Ceiling”). And it’s that forward motion that Little Mountain pitch-perfect from start to finish, and wildly engaging even off the stage. In many ways, this is the most true-to-Said-The-Whale record that Said The Whale has made to date.
Little Mountain is available March 6 from Hidden Pony. Until then, check out the excellent audio/video team for “Heavy Ceiling.”
+MP3: Said The Whale – Heavy Ceiling
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
I am going to see them LIVE April 21st, Park Theatre, Winnipeg, MB!
I couldn’t agree more with this review. I love Said the Whale, but also always felt a disconnect between the albums and the live show. Little Mountain certainly captures the band’s live energy better than the previous records.