Tin Hat - The Sad Machinery of Spring
Rating
RIYL
Tom WaitsRichard Leo Johnson
Miasma and the Carousel of Headless Horses
Beirut
Tracklist
1. Old World2. The Secret Fluid of Dusk
3. Blind Paper Dragon
4. Dionysus
5. Daisy Bell
6. Drawing Lessons
7. The Book
8. Dead Season
9. Black Thursday
10. The Tailor's Dummies
11. Dionysus II
12. The Land of Perpetual Sleep
13. Janissary Band
14. The Comet
15. Intractable
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Since the departure of founding member Rob Burger, the band formerly know as Tin Hat Trio has since dropped the Trio, reflecting their slow shift from a firm group structure to a more free-flowing collective. While their last offering, Book of Silk, was a transitional piece of work, The Sad Machinery of Spring shows that the band can continue unabated, even when one of its main facilitators and writers leaves the fold. The remaining founders, Carla Kihlstedt and Mark Orton, have not replaced Burger in their quest to see Tin Hat continue.
Instead, with the addition of Zeena Parker's avant-garde harp stylings, their more dramatic moments are given a more magical flourish; with the jumpy jazz chops of trumpeter (among other instruments) Ara Anderson, their upbeat tracks get an extra kick of coloring and a more resounding brightness and fullness of sound, while also creating a more depressing tone to their heavier, slower movements; clarinetist Ben Goldman, when given the space to gain notice, puts his distinct signature on the record as well, creating a more well-rounded sound to the group and giving them the closest they can get to a featured soloist on many of the tracks.
It is one of the many small wonders of the record that the new members are able to make such a firm imprint on the band's sound without creating any drastic changes to the way this remarkable band has always gone about its business. Their unique gifts fit seamlessly against Kihlstedt and Orton's already well-established interplay, as proven by their ability to leave the distinctive Tin Hat sound even when they are the sole writers of a piece, such as on album bookends "Old World" and "Intractable."
No track quite accentuates the change of the group and the skill of every last member of the collective like the brilliantly chirpy "Blind Paper Dragon." Orton plucks his acoustic with an aplomb not often seen by many of today's artists, first backed only by Anderson's triumphant trumpet work before being joined by Kihlstedt's always spectacular violin. When Parker's magnificent fingers splay across her harp for the first time, the track truly begins to take on a much more concrete, fleshed-out feeling, clearing room for Goldman's concise, yet magical clarinet solo, which slowly morphs into a duel with Anderson while the remainder of the quartet provide a firm field of play on which to battle. The next track, the distinctly less-sunny "Dionysus" is a striking contrast to "Blind Paper Dragon," as it is decidedly minimal, with no one artist outshining the other. Every instrument weaves in and out for its small moment, but none stands out obtrusively from the other, displaying a maturity only a band with Tin Hat's collected experience could provide.
Strangely, "Dionysus" still seems the perfect track to follow the haphazardly happy "Blind Paper Dragon." Therein lies the secret of The Sad Machinery of Spring: Even as the tracks differentiate themselves from one another, they all maintain a feeling that they cannot stand alone, that they are part of one cohesive unit, just as these acclaimed multi-instrumentalists could so easily fly free of one another and be superb, but in the back of their minds know that without the others, it just wouldn't be the same, could have been so much better.
The question heading into The Sad Machinery of Spring was where the band would go with the absence of Burger. The question now remains only slightly altered: Where can the band go from here? Through its decade of existence, the band has always managed to meld plenty of genres: folk, bluegrass, country, jazz, classical, experimental, and world music. Always, these different modes have been readily apparent and distinct to the listener. With their latest opus, Tin Hat has blurred the lines and created something truly genre-free, as listenable today as it would have been seventy years ago or will be seventy years from now, yet entirely of its own kind, with no equals, predecessors, copycats, or peers.
--Ben Rice
Comments
Minnesota
Find me EVERYWHERE:
Dallas, Texas
Austin
The Daily Galaxy
An elephant that never forgets...to kill!
Tucson, AZ
Sounds like Ben wants to catch a beating.
Sacramento, CA
nowhere is this stated in the review.
i don't really see them as anything similar, so i don't think it's fair to say one is better than the other. but let's just say tin hat (trio) has three albums i enjoy from front to back and parts of clann zu don't do it for me as much as they should. but also, tin hat trio had one album i didn't particularly care for and one i haven't heard yet because it's out of print.
I'm not here to make things better; only to observe and pass judgement.
Tucson, AZ
That's because your ears are broken.
"These are our lives, but did they ever even matter - are we worth remembering?"
- "Tip The Scales"
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