Tracks
Lichens: "Vevor of Agassou"
(2007)
By Dom Sinacola | 31 January 2008
Rob Lowe -- former bassist of Chicago’s 90 Day Men, a group, simply put, that was a slithering cross between noise and soul -- has stuck to his solo namesake and has recruited White/Light member and sound engineer Jeremy Lemos to record and mix the second Lichens album on Kranky, Omns. Although the recording contributions by fellow Chicago artists Shelly Steffans and Donny Mahlmeister keep the record’s majestic tone from relying on (and crediting) the duo of Lowe and Lemos too easily, it’s the White/Lichens performance trio, composed of Lowe, Lemos, and guitarist Matt Clarke, that justifies (along with the impassioned live ingenuity of solo Lowe) the melodramatic breadth of Omns. Both glass plains of falsetto and Neanderthal blues chords wrapped in mammoth fur, Omns is how Lowe’s captured bloodlust inside the limitless babel of his niche drone community. The sense of parochial family isn’t something Chicago’s scene can emulate without sharing in incestuous means of production, but exactly that kind of realism pervades Lowe’s work as it glowers openly through structural touchstones, suite notions, and palpable catharsis.
Why not admit to the esoteric appeal of a brand of music by indulging in sheer, shocking passages of melodrama? Regionally, Lichens fits within a dotted line, within a cast of “forward-thinking” musicians that seem to be characterized, if solely, by their exploration of minimalism within a new eye for audience accessibility. We’re talking Kranky, sure, and we’re talking the Hideout, but Lowe grafts a more overt stance on the uncompromising ways of his “collective.” His is about skewing typically uncompromising means, proving their gorgeousness while allowing for everything still impenetrable to maintain the grandest of meta-ideas. In fact, album opener “Vevor of Agassou” sounds every bit a shuddering libation to Sigur Rós, but it cuts out the fat without ciphering the track’s prenatal tension; a dissonant bass fires brimstone into “Vevor’s” cherubic belly and a lone electric guitar skips progression to obsess over a jangly phrase. Lowe manages to break down the immutable shell around his crystalline arrangement, creating juxtaposition that shares scope with his place in Chicago’s Nile-like scene, both celebrating and tearily moving away from his nurturing predecessors.
Why not admit to the esoteric appeal of a brand of music by indulging in sheer, shocking passages of melodrama? Regionally, Lichens fits within a dotted line, within a cast of “forward-thinking” musicians that seem to be characterized, if solely, by their exploration of minimalism within a new eye for audience accessibility. We’re talking Kranky, sure, and we’re talking the Hideout, but Lowe grafts a more overt stance on the uncompromising ways of his “collective.” His is about skewing typically uncompromising means, proving their gorgeousness while allowing for everything still impenetrable to maintain the grandest of meta-ideas. In fact, album opener “Vevor of Agassou” sounds every bit a shuddering libation to Sigur Rós, but it cuts out the fat without ciphering the track’s prenatal tension; a dissonant bass fires brimstone into “Vevor’s” cherubic belly and a lone electric guitar skips progression to obsess over a jangly phrase. Lowe manages to break down the immutable shell around his crystalline arrangement, creating juxtaposition that shares scope with his place in Chicago’s Nile-like scene, both celebrating and tearily moving away from his nurturing predecessors.