Red Sparowes - The Fear Is Excruciating, But Therein Lies The Answer (2010)

So many post-rock bands are content to just run with a pretty melody for 8 minutes without it really going anywhere, or else write songs that go from point A to point B through seemingly arbitrary melody changes. Red Sparowes, who spell their name this way on purpose, are about to release their third album, and first since 2006. I can say, without hesitation, that this is their strongest album so far. In more ways than one the band has cut out the fat, so to speak, producing a leaner, more substantial set of songs than before. The song lengths are shorter this time around averaging just under six minutes (not counting the short intro), while before they averaged almost nine minutes. They use the time better too. Never does it feel as though a song is stretched out just for the sake of it. “The Sixth Extinction Crept Up” from their debut, At the Soundless Dawn (2005) is a whopping 19 minutes, but it takes over five minutes to get give us anything more than a singular repeating guitar note then after the 11½ minute mark it suddenly gives way to a minute or so of silence and then random echoes for the duration. If you need to skip around to hear a select six minutes of a 15+ minutes track, it isn’t worth it, beautiful as the meat of the songs may be. This isn’t a problem anymore. New track, “A Hail of Bombs” is a good showcase for this new approach. The guitars immediately set the mood with a pleasant, surprisingly intricate, melody that shifts subtly throughout the four minutes of the song. Not a note is wasted just lingering on an isolated stretch of pretty sounds. The very first seconds and the final few seem as relevant to the songs as the very middle. These songs immediately get down to business and end before they’ve worn out their welcome. In terms of actual sounds, they creating a tense, moody atmosphere, but also deliver plenty of gorgeous ringing guitars with a lot of haziness and reverb. This atmosphere is more tense and ominous sounding rather than being pretty in a shiny sort of way, but it isn’t overly aggressive or downright depressing. Another bonus–a rather superficial one–is that the unnecessarily long song titles from past albums are no more. Instead of titles like “And by Our Own Hand Did Every Last Bird Lie Silent in Their Puddles, The Air Barren of Song as the Clouds Drifted Away. For Killing Their Greatest Enemy, The Locusts Noisily Thanked Us and Turned Their Jaws Toward Our Crops, Swallowing Our Greed Whole,” we have “As Each End Looms and Subsides” on the new album. It’s a bit easier to take the band seriously now, with this less annoying surface quality and a more streamlined sound. They do what they do really well, and it’s great to hear them step it up. Aside from being Red Sparowes’ best album, it’s also one of the best of the genre in recent memory.

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