Bodies of Water Twist Again Songs
Bodies of Water
Twist Again
Rating: 3.6/5.0
Label: Thousand Tongues
I suspect that the new album from the Los Angeles band Bodies of Water comes across as almost unbearably intimate even for those who don't realize that a married couple is the driving creative force behind the music. With that knowledge, the band's music begins to feel like overhearing conversations murmured in a quiet bedroom. It's not that the album is some lacerating act of confession akin to Richard and Linda Thompson's Shoot Out the Lights. Instead of lyrics that tear the veil off of a personal relationship, Twist Again achieves its closeness to its creators through the smooth allure of its music.
Building songs around a lovely pop sound reminiscent of Camera Obscura or Kings of Convenience, David and Meredith Metcalf create music that is glistening in its buoyancy and yet also refined and restrained. The song title "Rise Up, Careful" spells out the satisfying contradiction nicely. "Open Rhythms" provide just that, beginning with a bass line that has a touch of languid funk too it and then adding more layers: a rubbery guitar riff, a slowly surging tide of strings, quiet keyboard notes like loosed flower petals lofted through the air. It's a song that doesn't leap forward. It leans back instead, infused with a confidence that its richness will draw the listener in.
Both of the Metcalfs trade off lead vocal duties, often duetting on songs. "Mary, Don't You Weep" opens with David's smooth, unfussy baritone–he sounds a little like Lee Hazlewood trying on the high drama of Julian Cope's style–announcing, "I will be a bridge for you/ Over waters dark and deep/ And I will be an arrow too/ What is out beyond my reach," before Meredith answers with the flattened emotions of a '60s girl group singer who's about to explain how her rebel boyfriend met his end in a tragic motorcycle crash. But then their voices merge, distinct yet together, and the song spins upward into something big and bold. That effect alone makes a good case for togetherness.
The album is often at its best when it's quick and to the point. There are no expansive efforts here as everything seems pruned down to its essence. "Triplets" has a spare, bubbly verve, and the album closer "You Know Me So Well" is a languid ballad tinged with wistful regret. Both tracks clock in under two minutes, demonstrating the virtue of economy rather than seeming like only partially formed songs dropped in to fill out the disc. They're short, but they're also exactly as long as they need to be and not a note more. In some ways, that sense is clearest on the similarly brief "In Your Thrall Again," which reinforces the point by repeating the "Open Rhythms" refrain in a spirited, headlong dash.
Across the whole album, it can be difficult to fully get a handle on Bodies of Water. It's their third full-length effort and first in about three years. Clear and bright as it may be, it also sometimes sounds like a band trying to find their way, trying to shift and reassemble with an eye towards where they might take things in the future. Songs like the airy "Lights Out Forever" and the too-twee "Ever With Us" lack bite, making them feel more like dead ends that vital parts of the band's musical map. In a way, they seem like examples of songs that any band could come up rather than a necessary expression of the Metcalf household. They seem a little drab against the best efforts of Bodies of Water, which carry a welcome purity of purpose.
by Dan Seeger
Source: https://spectrumculture.com/2011/07/14/bodies-of-water-twist-again/
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