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We always hope that a band will have the inherent gravity needed to overcome the fracturing of its individual parts, but not all bands are as committed as The Rosebuds. “Go ahead and be my world,” sings Ivan Howard at the beginning of the duo’s new post-divorce LP Loud Planes Fly Low, and from there the album traces the consequences of such emotional allowance, all beautiful, non-eccentric sadness. Howard and his “world,” Rosebuds singer and keyboardist Kelly Crisp, have made happier albums, but whatever the prevailing mood, they need each other to provide music’s pulse and clarity.
Trading in the sparkling keyboard phrases of Night of the Furies and prickly shoegaze of Life Like for humid strings, Loud Planes reminds that violin speaks the language of romance, whether new and swelling or sickly and distorted. Violinist Daniel Hart augments the group on their current tour, and brought some of the new album’s texture to the Entry with long, shivery notes, but of course not all overdubbed nuance can register in concert and Howard’s indefinite repetition of song-ending refrains (“she floats like a bird in the canopy…”; “I feel I’m reaching out for the last time…”), laid against such a rich sonic plane on record, ends up hovering just this side of haunting, often settling on a less apt “entrancing.”
Howard sings those refrains in an always pretty, unblemished drawl, and we know he’s a Southerner because his voice becomes even more beautiful during lazy (read: sleepy, private) delivery. Crisp provides breathy harmonies, but sound problems at the Entry (why won’t they turn up her mic, already?) left her frequently inaudible. The effect proved appropriate during Howard’s songs, where she registered as little more than the memory of a voice, but unfortunate when she sang lead, though “Come Visit Me” was rescued by her more forceful pleading on the chorus.
She was back to memory-echo mode for her ghostly responses to Howard on Loud Planes standout “Waiting for You,” which follows the introspective acoustic template of much of the new album until its pieces assemble around a strong backbeat and a lavish arrangement erupts, as predicted by the ethereal, sleeping-energy drama of the chanted opening. It makes for a perfect gateway to “Woods,” a corker of a piano-pounding anthem and recent staple on local radio. The band must know they’ve got something here: Howard in particular didn’t hold anything back for his Oh! Good! God! peaking.
It was a bruising set-ender after “Nice Fox,” a sing-along about animal burial and the meaninglessness of existence, for which Howard walked to the edge of the stage with an unplugged acoustic guitar, leaving his microphone behind and uniting the audience in lamentation. The same scene transpired when the band played St. Paul’s Turf Club in 2008; it’s a live staple you might not expect to endure through bad times, but maybe now more than ever we need music to bring and keep atoms together, and “Nice Fox” achieved this via its presentation (intentionally) and the simple force of its songness (incidentally). At the Turf Club, the song had come across as a necessary reminder of sadness amidst joy; this time, it was pure melancholy.
Opening act Other Lives are admirable for the way they fit every conceivable instrument (the usual rock instruments and various percussion, plus, alphabetically, accordion, castanets, cello, slide guitar, timpani, trumpet, violin, and xylophone, to name a few) onto the smallest conceivable stage and proceed to play every single one, and only when the song absolutely requires them. The ensuing music is the answer to a question: how small a space can house so big a sound? Other Lives have Arcade Fire aspirations, for sure, and they’re already singing in the primarily long notes that indicate a self-belief in their ability to rouse crowds. They mostly confirmed this notion, especially when the cello and booming drums gave the songs an undeniable surge and swell.
The Rosebuds:
“Nice Fox” participants:
