San Diego's
Black Heart Procession traffics in spectral, timeless music; it could be the audio backdrop for Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," the score to a Fritz Lang silent film, or the soundtrack to some post-apocalyptic landscape. Since their debut,
1, in 1998,
Black Heart has been steadily filling out their sound, which seemed initially constructed of nothing more than ghostly synth washes, reductive basslines, saw moans, keyboards, and singer Pall A. Jenkins' yearning vocals (their second record, 1999's
2, was almost percussion free). By 2002's murder mystery narrative,
Amore del Tropico,
Black Heart had added a Latin twist and varied the funereal pace of their earlier records by emphasizing the guitars and punching up some songs until they practically rocked.
Amore's greatest conceit was sustaining
Black Heart's essence while adding layers of additional sonic textures from a host of contributing musicians. But
Amore proved difficult to replicate live, so
Black Heart's co-founders and main songwriters -- Jenkins and multi-instrumentalist Tobias Nathaniel -- trimmed the contributing roster for the next record, leaving only themselves, drummer Joe Plummer (
Magic Magicians,
Modest Mouse) and
Album Leaf members Jimmy LaValle (bass) and Matt Resovich (violin) to concoct
The Spell together as a band. While such a shift could have signaled a return to pre-
Amore minimalist sonics,
The Spell is instead a pitch-perfect blend of
Black Heart past and present, and a recording as accomplished as any that navigates similarly dark seas. It combines the musical urgency and guitar accentuation of
Amore with the ethereal spookiness of
Black Heart's earlier records, and expands the band's palette by adding ominous, riff-heavy stomps to songs awash in Orwellian menace. The latter informs the core of
The Spell, which compares the bewitching nature of love -- a
Black Heart staple -- with society's witting compliance in modern mind-control (especially post-9/11). "All our fears are fed/All our thoughts are read," Jenkins howls on the politically charged "GPS" as staccato guitar bursts and door-pounding percussion reinforce the song's 1984 tenor. Disc opener "Tangled," "The Fix," and the title track also feature pulsating guitar lines -- alternately played by Jenkins and Nathaniel -- and insistent drum beats high in the mix. These songs echo the nervous energy of the best of
Amore (minus the salsa), and together with shifting tempos and time signatures evoke apprehension and excitement in equal measure. But fans of
Black Heart's curtain-drawn studio incarnation -- where synth winds howl, saws whine, and organs creak -- need not feel nostalgic. "The Waiter #5" unfurls in languorous grace, fueled by Jenkins' ghostly saw (making its lone appearance on
The Spell). "Return to Burn" crawls menacingly from some prehistoric swamp with Jenkins' lap steel as siren's cry, and "To Bring You Back" is a rhapsodic disc ender with a panoramic, high-plains feel. Another indication of
The Spell's collective strength is the essential role each bandmember plays; remove one from the equation and the record is untenable. Nathaniel's piano, organ swells, and Wurlitzer swirls are omnipresent, alternately coloring backdrops in elegiac shadows or using cascading minor chords to heighten the sense of foreboding. Resovich, whose contributions were so integral to
Amore that he was asked to join the band full-time, may be
The Spell's most potent weapon. Bowed or plucked, and on some tracks both, his strings conjure all manner of moods and textures, from a gypsy's heartbeat ("Not Just Words"), to a Brecht/Weill cabaret vibe ("The Waiter #5"), and an Eastern European folk feel ("The Letter"). Beneath
The Spell's melancholy melodies, the rhythm section pulses with sinister energy: Plummer is superb and provides a crisp polyrhythmic attack, while LaValle's bass pumps lifeblood into the songs no matter their pace. When all these elements coalesce -- as they do, for instance, on the crescendo for "The Replacement," or the stately 6/8 waltz "The Letter," or the double-time paranoia of "The Fix" -- the effect is stunning.
Black Heart's music is often compared with
Nick Cave's dark inclinations, and they do mine the same wistful territory. Jenkins' lyrics, however, tend toward the sparse and elliptical rather than
Cave's voluble wordplay. But on
The Spell, Jenkins' straightforward couplets tie everything together; it may not be the straight narrative tale that
Amore was, but through his metaphors and recurring phrases
The Spell attains a similar cohesiveness. "Captured by you and slowly pulled into your web/The venom was smooth so I didn't mind a thing," Jenkins sings on the title track, leaving the listener to guess whether it's a lover or Big Brother pulling the strings. Of course, whether he's opining on love or the loss of freedoms, regret and remorse tinge Jenkins' stories in sepia tones: "In the letter that you wrote/Were the words you never spoke," he sighs on "The Letter," adding on "Return to Burn," "I am frozen in regret." Yet there is light in this darkness. As bandmembers insist in interviews,
Black Heart is not all gloom and doom. When Jenkins asks the listener on "GPS," "Would you believe when I say/All these things hang by a thread," it's more call to vigilance than doomsday knell. And this is
The Spell's crowning achievement: weaving a musical web that intoxicates with its exquisite symmetry and simultaneously liberates through artistic transcendence. These are ominous times, after all, when democratic governments spy on their own citizens, religious fanaticism burns across the globe, information anesthetizes more than enlightens, and love can literally kill -- honest music shouldn't shy from depicting modernity's accompanying dread. But acknowledging the spell is the first step to breaking it, and
Black Heart Procession has provided a near-perfect audio companion for the journey. ~ John Schacht