6: Not out of 5
One listener’s poetic is another’s ponderous, and I fear I lean towards the latter evaluation of The Black Heart Procession’s sixth album, wittily entitled Six. Nick Cave without the fire and passion, Tom Waits without the whimsy, this is a relentlessly gloomy series of dirges about devils, love, drugs, darkness and fishcakes. Okay, not fishcakes, but it would have added a refreshing twist, some much needed contrast.
The BHP do get their groove on every now and then, but it’s more the groove of a scar on your wrist then any carnivalesque dancing with Mr D. There is a certain beauty to a song like ‘Heaven and Hell’, with its slow, sliding rhythm and emphatic, almost dogged drumming, but lyrics like “I found heaven and hell, I thought you came to save my heart, you came to crush my soul” makes one long for the overblown metaphors of, say, Alice Cooper.
Iri Sulu is a pretty, evocative track too, once you’ve got over the disappointment of realising it’s not a reggae homage to the helmsman from the Starship Enterprise. But with lyrics like “Am I alive or am I dead, am I awake or in a dream”, you can’t help thinking, who cares. Just make up your mind, and take these torpid songs somewhere with a beginning and an end. So some fodder for your iPod playlist, but Six isn’t an album you’ll often want to listen to from beginning to end.
[First published in, and on, the Mail & Guardian]
Chris’ Music
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