Anathema, Falling Deeper: Le Saule S’Incline Dessus du Ruisseau
Posted in Reviews on November 10th, 2011 by H.P. Taskmaster
If Anathema’s career has been typified by anything, it’s a definite progression. The UK outfit – now in their 21st year – released We’re Here Because We’re Here last year and showed themselves to be fully entrenched in melodic and progressive rock; much of the melancholy that had served as the emotional crux of past works had vanished, and it seemed like even in the album’s most painful moments, the band was aware of the beauty in their sadness. Their newest outing, Falling Deeper (Kscope), follows suit in terms of mindset and doubles as a companion piece for 2008’s revisitation of older material, Hindsight, as well. Falling Deeper, true to its name, delves even further back into Anathema’s formidable catalogue, providing new arrangements and takes on material from some of the band’s earliest releases: the Crestfallen EP (1992), Serenades (1993), and Pentecost III and The Silent Enigma (both issued 1995). But it’s not just new arrangements. Songs like “Kingdom” and “They Die” have been given new life, reborn as gorgeously melodic excursions distilled from their original melodies, which seemed buried at the time under an ash cloud of despair. Dave Stewart, who arranged the strings for We’re Here Because We’re Here exceeds expectation on Falling Deeper, working with the London Session Orchestra, and together with the vocals of Daniel and Vincent Cavanaugh and Lee Douglas, the strings turn the beautifully wretched into just the beautiful. There are those whose sentimental attachments to the original incarnations of these songs will prevent them from enjoying the new versions, but as Anathema’s stylistic development has seen them long since move past their death/doom beginnings, nothing here should really come as a surprise to fans of the band on a conceptual level.
Interesting to note that as Anathema reworks these older songs, they do so with four-fifths of their original lineup intact. Daniel and Vincent Cavanaugh both handle guitar and vocals (the former also keys), brother Jaime Cavanaugh is on bass, and John Douglas drums. Long gone is the forlorn growl of Darren J. White, but with Lee Douglas (sister to John) taking a prominent role here among Daniel and Vincent, and a guest spot from Anneke Van Giersbergen on “Everwake,” there’s a lush complexity to these songs that lacks nothing in its presentation. Still, much of the material has been boiled down from its original form. “Alone” and “Sunset of Age” are the only two inclusions from The Silent Enigma, and as that album could be considered the launch point for the melodic growth that came to bear in the band’s sound over the course of subsequent albums Eternity (1996) and Alternative 4 (1998), it’s not necessarily surprising that they’re some of the most recognizable here. On the other hand, lines like “Is there a reason why you punish our children?/And rape our sisters?” are gone from “We the Gods,” which arrives as an instrumental toward the end of Falling Deeper and is truncated from its original 10 minutes to just over three. Likewise, opener “Crestfallen” plucks the album’s title line from the original version of the song and sweetly repeats it over piano and strings. In less gorgeous arrangements, the entire proposition would be offensive, but as they seem perpetually able to do, Anathema prove that nothing creative is sacrosanct. “Crestfallen” moves smoothly into “Sleep in Sanity,” which was already lyrically minimal in its initial form. Douglas’ drums provide a base for the layers of strings and vocals to triumph without being a complete wash of melody, and together with “Kingdom,” which follows, mark some of Stewart’s best work on the album.
There are ebbs and flows throughout Falling Deeper, and at times like the beginning of “Kingdom,” it feels like the band is hardly there. The song gradually builds though into one of the collection’s most satisfying, a steady undercurrent of percussion reminding of the plod of the original without being out of place, adding to the linearity of the structure. Electric guitar amp noise adds to the climax of “Kingdom,” and a long drone transitions into the piano opening of “They Die,” just 2:13 on Falling Deeper but no less melodically engaging than anything that comes before or after. One thing noticeable in listening is just how much Anathema is able to cull from what are essentially fractions of songs. Nothing here feels incomplete, nothing feels lacking. The songs here are completely different than what they used to be, but there’s a certain liberation in that. Van Giersbergen, whose voice defined in no small part a generation of female lead vocals in European melodic metal, seamlessly works through the verses of “Everwake,” and if anything on the album feels cut too short, it’s that. Fitting that at 3:07, this new take is longer than that which appeared on Crestfallen. It makes sense, somehow.
tainted by prejudice against it, I’ve finally and officially come to make peace with UK melodic proggers Anathema‘s latest album, We’re Here Because We’re Here.
Hey, what gives, Anathema? How’re you gonna go ahead and put out an album TWO WHOLE WEEKS ago and not tell me about it? I thought we were friends (and by “friends,” I mean I worship everything you do and you have no idea who I am)! What, my three copies of Alternative 4 aren’t good enough for you anymore? I know maybe I didn’t take out A Natural Disaster as much as I should have this winter, but give me a break, it’s been seven years! And now this???
I mean, seriously, would a phone call have been too much to ask? An email? Just a quick, “Hey there guy, we know you’ve been waiting seven years for a new Anathema CD and we just wanted to let you know it’s finally coming out.” I don’t think that’s unreasonable.
Okay, so influential UK doomers/atmospheric melodic rockers Anathema have announced tour dates, and guess where they’re not going, again? That’s right, America. Not even one show? Come on, man. Give me a New York show! How hard is that? If you need a place to crash, there’s plenty of room here in the valley.
