burning off impurities.

Last week I bought a CD. It was my first since about a year ago. That’s not to say I haven’t been obtaining new music, so don’t turn me into the RIAA. Following is a review I wrote of the album after listening to it repeatedly for about 5 days straight. Just because. Enjoy!

Grails are a band that have so far eluded the micro-taxonomy that pervades much of rock music these days. Since their first full-length album, the brilliant Burden of Hope, a gentle splash of dark-hued minimalism, they have sat uncomfortably on the outer boundaries of post-rock, perhaps because of their uncompromising instrumentalalism, their sonic palette which shifted abruptly from hushed whispers to bursts of noise, or their vibrantly expressive but unemotive atmospherics. Or maybe it’s just because they had a violinist. Whatever the case, Grails have been the black sheep of the post-rock family; on paper, they sound like they could be just another soft-LOUD-soft-LOUD Mogwai clone, but experience them firsthand and all comparisons to Godspeed You! Black Emperor suddenly seem trite. This has held true throughout their Irish folk-infused second LP, Redlight, as well as the pseudo-Indian exercises on The Black Tar Prophecies, their third full-length. With each new release, Grails further proved a band capable of reinventing themselves without losing their originality nor their unique sound.

How unexpected, then, that their latest album, Burning Off Impurities, turns out to be much closer to what you’d expect coming from their newest label, Temporary Residence. Much more a continuation of The Black Tar Prophecies than that album was to its predecessor, Burning Off Impurities takes the dense, succinct compositions of Grails’ previous efforts and extends them with long, arhythmic passages of improvised noodlings, sluggish but inexorable crescendoes, ambient psychadelic soundscapes, light but organic electronics, and many, many more instruments than the guitar-bass-drums-violin quartet that comprised their first two albums. Oh, and the track duration now routinely approaches double digits — complete with gapless track transitions throughout the entire album that make the whole thing run like one long bhang-assisted spiritual journey. In short, they’ve come to embrace much from that penultimately lazy rock subgenre which critics love to bash for its predictable unpredictability — post-rock.

The music is still shrouded in an obscure veil of ethnic musical influences, this time absorbing elements of Middle Eastern genres into the already eclectic mix. “Soft Temple” opens the album with a drone that bleeds into a swirl of acoustic guitar, banjo and keyboards on what sounds like a vaguely Sephardic harmonic scale, which in turn resolves into a triumphant acoustic guitar melody. “Silk Rd” continues the pulse with a nearly danceable melody that sounds like it could be an Arabic folk song arranged for metal ensemble. It’s all way cooler than it sounds, with not an ounce of hokiness, but one can’t help but think of Sting’s recent forays into the world music market. Fortunately, the band also exhibits less of an aversion to balls-to-the-wall rocking out this time around, betraying their roots from the militantly genre-defying DIY metal outfit Neurot Recordings. If they’re going to be doing away with their minimalist timbre, they might as well loosen the chains on the distortion knobs, which they do at all the right moments.

Still, all the psychadelic atmospherics and the lengthening of their compositions take their toll. Grails used to be admirably concise, packing more strong melodies into 3-minute song structures than many of their peers attempt in 10 minutes. Now, the playing field is level, and it’s telling that Burning Off Impurities contains two fewer tracks than The Burden of Hope, yet runs for 13 minutes longer than that earlier album. 50 minutes is by no means too long for a full-length LP, but one can’t help miss the refreshing non-repetitiveness of Grails’ older pieces. Several tracks also fit the definition of “filler” songs — “More Extinction” and “Drawn Curtains” become forgettable transitions between the bursts of brilliance in the surrounding tracks, and the epic accomplishment that is “Origin-ing” (by far the best track on the album, and perhaps my new favorite in Grails’ repertoire) clearly overshadows the title track that follows — a deliberate cool-down that ends the album with a relative whisper.

But after such a strong track record of musical self-retraint, no one can fault Grails for wanting to stretch their legs and flex their instrumental muscles a little bit. “Burning Off Impurities” is definitely shaping up to be their most accessible release, and perhaps the move to a bigger label affords the band an opportunity to be just a little more self-indulgent. Grails may have adapted elements from a crowded subgenre that they have previously avoided, but they still sound nothing at all like Sigur Ros.

-D