Review: Oxbow ‘Love’s Holiday’
Eugene Robinson‘s 1980s hardcore outfit Whipping Boy had hinted at the future with albums such as MuruMuru incorporating other sounds and influences into that band’s music. Fast forward 35 years and several groundbreaking albums later and we have Oxbow‘s latest Love’s Holiday, the long-awaited follow-up to 2017’s deservedly acclaimed Thin Black Duke.
The theme of the record in case you hadn’t twigged is love with Robinson himself commenting how he has ‘always been chagrined that no one understood that our songs were love songs’. It will be interesting to hear the band’s take on this very concept, I can’t imagine it will be hideous autotuned R’N’B somehow.
Dead Ahead kicks things off with unsurprisingly uncompromising noise-rock, however, there are more melodic parts than you’d have otherwise expected recalling the likes of Swans and their focus on chanted refrains. The vocals too feel like a genuinely bona fide additional instrument as opposed to the detached Nick Cave-esque stream of consciousness we’ve grown accustomed to. A fantastic opener.
Icy White & Crystalline throws up another surprise, it’s the most traditionally ‘rock’ sounding I’ve heard from Oxbow as if lifted straight from the ‘80s. But such is the band’s skill in managing to effectively adopt a sound that in less capable hands would sound like a sleazy disaster. Lovely Murk is the album’s lengthiest piece and a slow brooding number featuring majestic operatic vocals from Kristin Hayter aka Lingua Ignota. There is a haunting gothic Led Zeppelin quality present and guitarist Nico Wenner‘s talent as an arranger comes to the fore with some tender folk style instrumentation partway through. Indisputably a personal favourite.
Love’s Holiday feels like the album Oxbow have been building up to since their inception…
1000 Hours features an unlikely collaborator in the form of Roger Joseph Manning Jr (Jellyfish/Beck), however, with its psychedelic charm, his inclusion soon begins to make perfect sense. The music contrasts beautifully with the downbeat nature of the lyrical content ‘Where would I be without you? Don’t think I can live without you’. All Gone is classy featuring, as it does, lovely accompanying piano and a fifteen-person choir, like a modern day Bad Seeds but far more engaging, while The Night The Room Started Burning reminds me of what I could expect to find on say, Final Descent by Samhain. That is not to say this is horror punk in any way, but rather it shares a creepy tonality, the subtle death-rock flavours are more low-key and subtle than the flamboyantly over-the-top haunted house vibes of a lot of Mr Danzig’s output.
The abstract titled “ “ at twenty-eight seconds is an interlude which though sonically fine is far from essential, the same cannot be said however about Million Dollar Weekend. Taking on a more improvisational jazzy approach, the track is reminiscent of post-rockers like Enablers and latter-day Talk Talk, which I’m certainly not unhappy about, meanwhile, The Second Talk has a deliciously disjointed punk-blues country-fried vibe not too dissimilar to Mule in spots. Gunwale, as with All Gone, utilises the fifteen-person choir that lends the track on this occasion an oriental flavour. The drone nature of the music also has one thinking of Earth’s post-reformation output and hence a trippy sensibility that concludes the album on a blissful otherworldly note. Sublime.
Love’s Holiday feels like the album Oxbow have been building up to since their inception. Usually when a band is described as maturing, it comes with worrying connotations of blandness, conformity and becoming watered down. Nothing could be further from the truth here as what you are left with instead is both an exceptional set of songs and a strong contender for album of the year.
Label: Ipecac Recordings
Band Links: Official | Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram
Scribed by: Reza Mills
