52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #24

John Knox Sex Club – Raise Ravens

(Self-released, 2011)

Buy the album here

Scotland is renowned as a proud country of great national beauty, from the coves and jagged rocks of its coastline to the beguiling and ever-changing scenes of its highland ranges, but for most of its inhabitants Scotland is a far more urban experience.  With massive population centres like Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland’s history and character are as tied to industrialisation, living conditions, and education, as they are to its famous mountains, lochs, and wildlife (real or mythic).  While Scottish music may still be widely considered to stem from rural and Highland traditions, and most commonly encountered at ceilidhs, Scotland has a more recent but equally important musical identity.  Bands like Belle and Sebastian, Arab Strap, and Mogwai have created a new urban “folk” music that, inadvertently or otherwise, draws on tradition but actively engages with the urban existence of Scotland’s contemporary population.  For me, John Knox Sex Club does this better than anyone.  Even their name pulls on Scotland’s history and drags it in to the red-tinged light of modern, urban Scotland.  Filled with traditional instrumentation juxtaposed with amplified guitars, crashing percussion, and honest vocals with native accents, theirs is an openly folk approach to post-rock-influenced indie.

To describe John Knox Sex Club simply as indie denies them the full impact of their epic visions and immense musical power.  It’s a music that should only be played in the cavernous and echoing halls of grand castles and cathedrals.  Fittingly, the vocals are delivered with the worryingly addictive vehemence of a preacher sermonising on your sins, while the orchestral strings clash with the rhythm section like the forces of heaven battling the demons of hell.  This is epic indie with unbound scope and musical ambition.  Opening track, and 13-minute behemoth, “Kiss the Dirt” does all of this and more with its cold, foggy, Scottish morning opening gently strummed and lyricised, and its powerfully cathartic peaks packed with Mogwai-like progressive dynamics.  The heartfelt and beautiful vocals work alongside the violins to cut through the intensity of the instrumentation and provide a moving poetic exploration of modern civilisation.  The lyrics are an epic poem of human history, mythology, politics, fate, love and more that anchors itself to modern urban life:

Link arms across

High rise flats

Or watch as our lives drop

Like dripping taps

In forgotten rooms

It is an unfathomably good song; uplifting yet honest, musically epic but never complex, “Kiss the Dirt” is an astounding way to open an album.  The only problem being that it’s impossible for the album to maintain this standard.

“Above Us the Waves” is a beautiful song of longing that replaces the immensity of “Kiss…” with lyrical and musical subtlety.  Passion is still a driving force here, but John Knox… ask us now to take pleasure in quiet moments, gentle melodies, self-effacing hooks, and minute domestic observations meeting grand nature similes.  It’s a comedown of sorts, but one that rewards repeat listens.  From there an instrumental track leads us from “…Waves” to the more outwardly post-rock slow build to powerful release of “The Neighbours” and its memories of family strife in urban settings.  A memorable chorus is supported by a twisted bass line that winds itself around the gliding strings and escalating wails of both vocalists, before ominously leaving us with the permanent and unresolved danger of the line “like footsteps in the hall”.  It’s another impassioned poem of urban life that leaves the listener in awe.  “Katie Cruel” is a reworking of a traditional song that further develops the idea of a new folk music in Scotland.  The sparse, gloomy atmosphere combined with the underlying distorted guitar sounds give this traditional song a modern twist without overwhelming the strings and the original lyrics.  Where hints of Harvestman peek through on “Katie Cruel”, the final track has a more accessible Crippled Black Phoenix quality to it.  A noticeably warmer verse and guitar sound in “The Thaw” is interrupted by the experimental, part spoken word, mid-section that layers light sounds in a dizzying manner.  John Knox… then find their way gently to the uplifting and hopeful repetition of the album’s final line:

The grass grows beneath the ice and snow

Produced in small batches and packaged by hand by the band themselves, Raise Ravens is a unique view on modern life in Scotland produced by a truly independent band.  Never disavowing the past, never judging the present, and finally pointing to the future, John Knox… have produced an album that touches on all parts of life in Scotland.  While the lack of record company backing may have contributed to multiple hiatuses, it is their independence that allowed John Knox… to truly express themselves and deliver the beauty of this album to anyone who wishes to listen.

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #45

Katatonia – The Great Cold Distance

(Peaceville Records, 2006)

Buy the album here

On the way to Tower Records in Shibuya in 2006 there was a small, and I assume independent, music shop. Unlike the amazingly durable Tower Records which still exists, I also assume that the shop has long since closed, but on that sunny early summer day over 10 years ago they performed their greatest moment of capitalist charity. They were selling off CDs sitting in boxes left on the pavement in front of the shop window. You would assume that these CDs were the unsellable rubbish of 2006, such as Nick Lachey's What's Left Of Me, and that may have been so, but there was at least one gem in there not even hidden from the eyes of Tokyo's shoppers. Was I the only one seeing this? Katatonia's The Great Cold Distance was in plain sight with a price so low that I still think I'm misremembering it. The exchange rate has changed a lot since then, but in 2006 ¥500 would have been equivalent to roughly £2.50, which makes this album one of the greatest value purchases of all time. It was still a very new release at that time, and I've failed in my attempts to apply logic to its pricing other than to surmise that Japan isn't hot for sorrowful, melodic, doom-inspired metal from depressed looking Swedes. Japan's loss was my gain, and Katatonia and I have been having a love affair ever since.

Some might think that it's difficult to get close to a band with the appropriately cold and distant approach to songwriting that Katatonia display here. But the almost clinical delivery, crisp production, and Jonas Renkse's restrained melodic vocals lend their sorrow a certain Brechtian distance that promotes deep contemplation rather than expressive anguish, and allow the more “metal” moments to stand out. That's not to say this record isn't sonically as well as emotionally heavy. With brutal thrashers like “The Itch” Katatonia display the ferocity that makes clear their associations with acts like Opeth, Bloodbath, and even their legendary British indie label, Peaceville. But Katatonia's music works in different ways to heavy music predicated on the notion that lighter moments, such as a groovy guitar riff in an otherwise brutal grindcore song, provide the necessary relief and respite from the intense building of tension that precedes it. On The Great Cold Distance the musically heavier moments are the listener's chance to escape the sorrowful darkness of the gentle instrumentation and introspection that are at the heart of what Katatonia do. Banging your head to the heavy parts of “Soil's Song” provides an escape from the oppressive wintery feel of the opening and bridge sections, as if releasing you from the tundra of this Swedish soil.

“My Twin” and “Consternation” encapsulate all that later Katatonia have come to represent: the former providing a forlorn ballad with a catchy and floating chorus, while the latter displays Anders Nyström's vicious guitar sound, superb songwriting, and drumming equally at home in death metal and acoustic folk. In fact, it's Katatonia's songwriting excellence and skill with their respective instruments that sets them apart from other bands that have tried such melodic dark metal. No other band can appeal equally to fans of Evanescence and Death. If you are in the position of trying to convince a friend that metal is for them then Katatonia might be the ideal gateway band to get them hooked on even harder stuff.

“In The White” is the cold, distant heart of this album, and is the perfect song with which to introduce newcomers. The poppy bass line counters lilting guitars that lead us to Renkse's opening lullaby:

Are you in or are you out

The words are stones in my mouth

Hush little baby don't you cry

Truth comes down

Strikes me in the eye

The verses float along on the bass line allowing the vocal to gently guide us through this dark loneliness before the chorus offers a solution:

To overcome this

I become one with

The quiet cold of late November

But as with all Katatonia, this respite is fleeting and we are pulled back down to the “quiet cold”. It's a song, an album, and a band that balances hope and despair, light and dark. Even though it was a warm, sunny day in Tokyo when I was a newcomer to Katatonia, I will always remember it as a sharp, cold, dark, and beautiful moment in a frozen Scandinavian landscape. Japan has had my heart since I lived there over 10 years ago, but my musical heart has been pulling towards Sweden ever since that day in 2006.