(2019) Wovoka Gentle - Start Clanging Cymbals


Review:
Just looking at the tracklist of Wovoka Gentle’s Start Clanging Cymbals, you can tell you’re in for a wild ride (see: “1000 Opera Singers Working in Starbucks” or “Sin Is Crouching at Your Door (sad puppy!!!1!)”). There isn’t a dull moment on this album, whizzing through what feels like an endless stream of influences, instruments and innovations. The kaleidoscopic nature of the record makes it hard to believe that the band – comprised of twin sisters Ellie and Imogen Mason, plus Imogen’s husband Will Stokes – began their careers in the west London folk scene. Although those influences peek through the curtains in tracks “Tell ‘Em, Makoto!” and “[It’s All OK]”, all in all it feels like these musicians couldn’t get much further away from where they started out. The album begins with what sounds like a 70s radio jingle, before enveloping itself in a fascinating cocktail of instruments, from trumpets to drum machines, from alien-like synthesisers to classical violins. One of the most alluring components of their sound is their near-perfect vocal harmonies, where the intimacy of its members becomes evident. There’s a hymn-like resonance in these moments, which is echoed lyrically as the band deftly tackle religious themes of prayer, sin and redemption. There are moments on this album where we genuinely struggle to figure out what’s going on. But even in those moments, where the album feels like some kind of extra-terrestrial encounter, it still sounds cool. ‘1000 opera singers working in Starbucks couldn’t sing themselves to freedom’ Stokes implores on the track that was picked for the recent FIFA 19 videogame soundtrack, shooting the band into a new-found fandom in a (perhaps unexpected) twist of fate. It’s on tracks like this that the band sounds their best – euphoric, uplifting and downright impressive.


Tracklist:
01 - Salient Point
02 - Punxsutawney Phil
03 - Small Victory
04 - [I Saw a Bright White Light]
05 - 1,000 Opera Singers Working in Starbucks
06 - Peculiar Form of Sleep (Tiresias Theban)
07 - [It’s All OK]
08 - Gennesaret
09 - Tell 'Em, Makoto!
10 - Oystercatcher
11 - Xerxes ‘19
12 - [‘Josh, Shout Something!’]
13 - Sin Is Crouching at Your Door(Sad Puppy!!!1!)


Summary:
Country: UK
Genre: art pop, indie-folk


Media Report:
Source: CD
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Bit rate: ~ 651-950 Kbps
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits