LOGIN FREE ACCOUNT MY ACCOUNT HELP

Description:
The spidery rock of "Devil's Broom" is more straight-ahead at the front but somehow more ominous: "In the time when I can't enough to make it/Give me back half the sense that I used to have/Waking up in the sun face down on the pavement/Everything I own in a garbage bag" -- but by the time the refrain slides around everything becomes lush, nightmarishly euphoric, and utterly strange and beautiful. Another standout is "Echo Park." The wonderfully arranged strings provide a patchy cushion that is elegant, graceful, and nearly pastoral, as they hover above and float though Arthur's poignant yet hopeful love song. "Even Tho" is a mutant pop song, with drum loops, wispy, shimmering keyboards, and a killer falsetto soul vocal from Arthur. The muscular drum loop "Wasted" undercuts the vulnerable vocal and dubby organ and electric piano lines. And so it goes on into the nocturnal, narcotic faux R&B groove of "Failed," the fractured overdrive lullaby that is "I Am," and the spindly, skeletal tenderness that is "A Smile That Explodes." The set closes with the spooky, harrowing narrative of "Leave Us Alone," closing the record on a fractured note. But the fragmentation, disintegration, and outsider narratives that are at the heart of the protagonists in Arthur's songs are familiar, too. Though they may live on the stiletto edges, they speak our language in that they bravely and even innocently articulate the most hidden of emotions, the ones we are afraid to admit let alone speak. And in doing so they bring them into the scope of the reachable, the mentionable, and their weight can be shared even among those of us lucky or fearful enough to never experience their consequences. Arthur is in a class of his own and Our Shadows Will Remain is a monstrous, memorable outing, his finest moment in a career that is thus far full of them. Thom Jurek.

More music4me > Pop > Pop

More Arthur, Joseph

shopping cart

play4me.com.au login

username:

password:

Remember me