June 1, 2004 • G7 Welcoming Committee Records
It's always a shame when a band breaks up before their time. Too many stick around and create a lot of stale, uninteresting music, which is always disappointing, but it's worse when a band who consistently improves calls it quits when they're peaking. Black Coats & Bandages is Clann Zú's second and final album, on which they brought a much more cohesive sound that is probably among the best in the genre.
If you've heard their first album Rua you can tell that the band has matured quite a bit. The Irish folk sound that took over much of Rua got a bit too bombastic and over-done at times (not saying it's a bad album by any means); here, they're gotten much better at merging the folky stuff with the indie-rocky stuff to create a seamless sound, and it works very well. There is a lot more post-rock influence, drawing a lot from the early Mogwai / Slint camp, which is a sound I'm not tired of yet; there is even a bit of jazziness thrown in as well (including some nice piano and some actual saxophone on "From an Unholy Height", which sounds great). Such influences help bring in a lot of emotion into the songs without sounding stale, even in context of their first album. The song structures are still a bit unusual but there's barely any of the overdone quiet-loud-quiet-loud dynamics that plauge a lot of this style of music from the 2000s; more focus is spent on textures and mood, and it pays off.
Maybe because they have a better handle on what they are doing, the album flow and dynamics work flawlessly. There are some slow, melancholy pieces, some faster, rockier/jazzier pieces (still melancholy, though); it's nearly impossible to get bored listening to the album because so many different things happen, but there is almost never a point where anything feels out of place or contrived. The album flows as a whole much better than Rua and works a lot better when listened to in one go, which makes the experience much more immersive (and it's the way I almost always listen anyway).
If I had to make one minor complaint about the album, it's Declan de Barra's vocals. They aren't bad, but he didn't really mature his style along with the rest of the band as he can get overdramatic sometimes and hogs the spotlight. Case in point: "From Bethlehem to Jenin" starts as a very quiet and slow organ piece, but the way he sings over it doesn't fit as he's very loud and more dynamic than he should be. Once the guitars and drums come in, he calms down a bit, but I can't help feeling he ought to have tried a bit more to fit the atmosphere of the music. In fact, sometimes I feel that there are simply too much of the vocals at all, often coming in before the song has a chance to get started up.
Regardless, I can't find fault in any of the other musicians. The guitars convey a huge range of sounds (again, see Slint, and often hints of Godspeed), and the continued use of electric violin from Rua is very welcome. The drums are still good, if not better; sometimes they bring a bit of a math rock feel with some interesting polyrhythmic grooves that, again, don't feel out of place.
It is a shame the band broke up after this album, because they could probably have pulled off another really great album or two after Black Coats & Bandages, but we'll have to be satisfied with this and Rua; yet I think I'm okay with that. They carved a nice little niche in the indie rock world and I haven't heard a similar album of this quality yet.
isn't that terrible! I feel like most of the time though they stay together and make some really crappy albums after about 15 years and they don't change their style or anything.
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