Innovators almost invariably settle into a comfortable rut if they stick around too long. Earth lynchpin Dylan Carlson stumbled across such a winning formula on 2005’s Hex; Or Printing in the Infernal Method, a formula of which he’s basically spent the past several albums attempting to coax another masterpiece out of the same cloth: turgid Western noir with sweeping vistas and relaxed, palpably pulpy mood… the soundtrack to a cinematic Cormac McCarthy adaptation, or several of them as the case may be.
Long known for switching up styles with nearly every release, Carlson served notice that the country instrumentation was here to stay when he re-recorded several old Earth tracks in the same milieu for Hex’s follow up, Hibernaculum. He subsequently hit pay dirt with the sound on 2008’s The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull, still the apex of this period in his artistic “continuum”.
Carlson doesn’t exactly abandon his Western noir template on this year’s Primitive and Deadly – an uncharacteristically ho hum album title that serves as more blunt descriptor than evocation – but he does tear down the barbed wire fences a bit, opening his pastoral drone to a greater sense of experimentation than we’ve seen since he settled into the sound to begin with.
For one thing, there are actual vocals on an Earth album for the first time since 1996 (!). Considering Carlson was a frequent associate of Kurt Cobain, it seems preposterous that we’ve never seen the man collaborate with fellow Cascadian Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees), especially when you hear Lanegan’s weathered rasp crooning soulfully over “There Is a Serpent Coming” and “Rooks Across the Gate”. Also making an appearance, on “From the Zodiacal Light”, is Rabia Shaheen Qazi of Seattle’s own Rose Windows.
The vocal tracks are the highlight of the album, and highlight the degree to which Carlson had painted himself into a corner a bit with the Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light albums: his recent instrumental pieces are unassailable in terms of circumscribing and isolating a particular tone or atmosphere, but from there his lengthy pieces have a tendency to just sort of slowly marinate… which is kind of the purpose of drone, I realize, but the insistence on adhering to the shambling country noir sound on each and every track has imbued the last few albums with a kind of déjà vu sense of sameiness.
Primitive and Deadly sees Carlson attempting to claw himself out of that rut, but on the instrumental tracks he seems to regress back into the holding pattern that has undermined his last two albums. To give due credit, the guitar textures show a little more versatility (courtesy guest slingers Brett Netson and Jodie Cox), and jettisoning the cello and other non-rock instruments has given a tonal focus that wasn’t present on the Angels of Darkness albums. But the lumbering monotony of Adrienne Davies’ percussion – she seems to replicate the same pattern with slight adjustments on every single song – severely hamstrings the listener’s ability to differentiate one track from the next.
All of this is not to say that Primitive and Deadly doesn’t represent a welcome rebound for Earth as more collective than actual band. The vocalists seem to push Carlson to temper his love of swirling atmosphere with a real sense of forward momentum, which is exactly what has been missing in his work for far too long now. The best drone may yet be repetitive, but there is a sense of build or progression which has been largely absent since Earth’s early days. There’s nothing wrong with instrumental music – much post-rock eschews vocals altogether, so this is hardly unfamiliar territory – but if collaborating with likeminded singers gets Carlson out of his own head a bit then here’s to hoping for more of that on future material.
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