Habitat would suggest that this album is going to be one about growth, nature, stretching into the light – far from it. On this third album, Beliefs are most definitely in a twilit, tarry swamp with the alligators and boa constrictors.
Consistent in releasing an album every two years, this time the Toronto twosome of Josh Korody and Jesse Crowe have produced a tonally harmonious and really rather velvety one. But it is dark.
Unlike The Cure’s Disintegration, which must be about the bleakest album ever, Habitat is a little bit yin and yang. It is rescued from the pits of despair by the sustained positivity of the melodies. Like a cheerful friend, think Joy and Sadness in Inside Out, the guitar riffs seek to lift the mood again and again. On ‘All Things Considered’ the guitar is positively jaunty, and that takes some doing in the face of Crowe singing, ‘Pray for the morning/The sky’s the warning.’ You can almost hear the guitar saying, ‘”C’mon, cheer up, luv. Give us a smile.’
Whilst it is the tracks on which Crowe’s vocals feature that are the sombrest, it would do her a great disservice to suggest that her emotions are one-dimensional. And, in fact, none of her low-spiritedness detracts from the range or clarity of her voice. For instance, ‘Divided Youth’ has a ‘Nightclubbing’, tiger-padding bassline and an increasingly abrasive guitar but Crowe’s vocal remains steady over it all, never once succumbing to the louche, vibrating noise around her. If anything the music follows her in a rhythmic chant especially in the final section of the song.
‘Half Empty’ takes a more delicate approach, the rising scale of both instruments and vocals in the chorus heightening the emotion. Crowe is quite certain that she can’t take you where you need to go because, as the title says she ‘can’t fill you up.’ Glass half full, and all that. The concluding track, ‘Shadow Of The Son’, whilst making you feel like you need to escape into the sunshine, has some fabulous moments when Crowe is utterly empowered.
Where Korody takes charge of the vocals, the tracks have more of a ‘Warm Leatherette’ by The Normal quality. ‘Comb’ and ‘Swamp Cave’ both being cases in point. It is a change that Habitat benefits from enormously. Musically, these tracks are both upbeat and, in the case of ‘Comb’, more experimental than the rest.
Habitat is definitely an album to wallow in. Unlike many releases at the minute, it doesn’t attempt to capture or reflect prevailing concerns or fears. Instead, this seems a much more personal journey. It certainly seems like there are brighter days ahead and that the next Beliefs album, in precisely two years’ time, will be different entirely.
Habitat will be released on 22nd September 2017 through Outside Music/Hand Drawn Dracula.
