New single: BIG DUMB AMERICAN
From the album “Stratum” – listen to it or download it for FREE from
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Between you and me, I have been trying to write a review of “Stratum” by Warchalking for a couple of weeks and this is the first time I have even attempted to put pen to paper. I’ve been listening to the album for a while now – maybe even as far back as a month ago that it first landed on my pc, albeit in a much less shiny unmastered state. And truthfully, I’ve been hooked on those ten incredible tracks ever since. So you would think that by now, surely knowing the songs like the back of my own hand that I’d simply be able to turn up and effortlessly trumpet their existence. Only it isn’t as straightforward as that. Here I am, sitting staring at the notes that I’ve enthusiastically scribbled as I went along, now reading back like some black and white textual abstract printing error. Therein lies the two main reasons why this trumpet is so tricky to blow – the sheer complexity of the record, and the struggle I’m having to define it contextually. Trying to write something that does justice to these songs is like chasing the end of a rainbow. How I feel about it is always shifting, redefining itself, and just when I think I have something to finally pin it on, I realise that it’s merely a trick of the light.
So if we’re going to begin anywhere, then let’s begin at the surface and work our way down: “Stratum” is a pan-dimensional experience rather than a simple adventure for your ears. Despite its roots being in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, it is much less a product of modern America, and much more a reaction to it. As its title suggests, here is a collection of songs that are positively subterranean by nature – the sound of the American underground and with a little bit of luck, quite possibly a sound of the future too. The far-reaching scope of each track is mirrored enigmatically in the heady depths of the album – there are serious layers everywhere you look. Here is home-recorded multi-multi-tracked music, vocal tracks and harmonies overlapping guitar parts overlapping more guitar parts. Stripped down hasn’t sounded so sonic since Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. But make no mistake, this is a long way away from the hippy naivety of the 1960s – “Stratum” mixes the colours up beneath the earth and when it rips up like oil from your speakers the picture it paints is as dark and poetic as it is bright and melodic. Like I said, this is a complex record.
Of course you don’t have to dive in so deep. From the opening acoustic pop of “I Know Your Name” to the closing upbeat paradox that is “As We End”, there are enough songs to carry this as simply a really good record to stick on and kick back to. As anyone who has been lucky enough to grab a copy of the Warchalking untitled debut album can testify, this guy has an unnerving ability to put a surface sheen on some dark matter. You only have to listen to both “Diving Bell” and “Acts of Medicine” on previous Daydream Generation compilations to see what I mean. Ultimately “Stratum” is more of the same and then some. The layers may be finer and more concise like some kind of sculptor who is mastering the trade of making pinpoint shapes and shadows, but the continuity is there for anyone who loved what he was doing before. So again there’s the complexity of the thing – that you can take it at face value and really enjoy songs like the acoustic-indie-rock “Steady The Hand”, or the magnificent sprawling sonic blast that is “Song Of Place”, or you can let yourself get sucked in, find yourself irretrievably engulfed in the words and sounds that roll away beneath your feet. While on the subject of lyrics, I guess I might as well deal with them here. There is a staggering army of phrases and ideas flying around across the landscape of this thing. At times they can sound so complicated that it seems to reach a level of surrealism easily marvelled at, but very difficult to connect with. On the flipside there is the counterweight of poignant lines that flicker and stick in your brain – “we get lost so easily”, “why you so scared boy? /so many got it worse than you”, “jammed between the meaning and the phrase”, “won’t you breathe for me” – I could keep going, but hopefully you get the idea. Listen to it close enough and you’ll see that this is no psychedelic world of thought-stream prose; it’s dark and complex observational poetry, intensely personal and objectively detached at the same time. If this record has a great strength other than the melodic stack of voice and chords, then it is undoubtedly its wonderful web of lyrics.
It seems almost ridiculous to pick out stand-out tracks on such a consistently good album. But if you held me at gunpoint then I’d have to reluctantly point towards the aforementioned “Steady the Hand”, and the riff-driven politik of “Big Dumb American”, featuring in the Singles section on our website. Aside from both being just damn fine songs in their own right, taken in context with the rest of the album, these are the staggering testimony of just how expansive one man and a guitar can sound. Beyond them though, you can’t ignore tracks like the commercially potent pop of “The Warning”, the U2-esque (when they were semi-credible) “Pray We Get There Soon”, or the haunting brilliance of “First Responder”.
Finally back to that notebook of mine. You know I never looked at it once while I typed this up. For me at least, the code remains uncracked and I retreat to a juncture where this record remains simply a great collection of songs that I can happily play whenever there is void. The simple truth is that with “Stratum” you really can go as deep as you want to go – the writing is on the wall for you to follow, and it begins with a big symbol written in chalk, looks a lot like a “W” inside a circle. Where it goes I guess, at the end, is up to you.
“Stratum” by WARCHALKING was released on 19th March 2008
for FREE download exclusively by Daydream Generation Records
and it’s an absolute honour to launch a makeshift record label with an album like this
You can download the entire album by visiting the dgRECORDS link at the top of this page.