Love Will Tear Us To Shreds - Act I: And Quiet Flows The Dawn
Vee Device
www.playlouder.com"Over the town roamed the homeless moon. I went along with her, warming up in my heart impracticable dreams and discordant songs." -Isaac Babel
OK, it would be harsh to judge this collection of songs 'discordant' but to compose a three part opera about a dissident Soviet author who escaped the anti-Jewish pogroms at the dawn of the twentieth century only to shot by the NKVD (for, well, no reason whatsoever) in today's climate of virtual artistry - well I reckon that could be legitimately termed 'impracticable'. Thankfully Vee Device don't scrape before corporate necessity, and whatever the musical merits of this record I for one will applaud forever it's left-field audacity and salute any band who steer their boat away from the safety of the harbour at Legend Rock, with its rules and enervated affectations, preferring to head for intemperate waters and the uncertain breezes of ideas and information.
"The last thing I saw was God's holy dawn setting the village aflame" begins the album, thus setting the tone for a feast of rich imagery and fine poetry. The band and various local musicians, friends and family play the parts of Babel, Maxim Gorky and Stalin plus other parts germane to the plot. And Quiet Flows The Dawn tells the story of William Babel from his time on the battlefields of the Polish-Soviet war of 1920, recording events into his '1920 Diary' (which formed the basis for his most famous work Red Cavalry); "My ink's running thick with the blood of these words, they dry like tomorrow's nightmares", through to his eventual destruction. There are letters from Babel to his wife, Elayna, who had immigrated to France in 1925; these are heartbreaking "There's just an empty, creeping void that fills my pocket / I lost your locket in the mud". This isn't something knocked up over a hot spliff in the back of the tour bus, the research is remarkable and the words and conversations are fluid and authentic.
Musically and despite sudden shifts in style, the album hangs together beautifully; groaning cellos underpin bubbling banjos and sighing strings. Vee's vocals come across as a music hall Bowie ('God' is pronounced 'Gaahd') and take some getting used to but after a few listens they walk hand in glove with the offbeat rhythms and deft concept. Fittingly, for an opera, there are recurring musical motifs and a thematic approach that is never stretched or spread thin. There are no 'singles', no college radio pap; this is a band working on the peripheries, art from the borders, an astute, imaginative and engaging listen. Babel would have been proud.
playlouder -- Tuesday, January 2, 2007
By Domino Jones