Danish post rock quartet My Beloved will celebrate their twenty-fifth anniversary this year, and what better way to do it than with a new album? Tarnish comes five years after its predecessor Echoes Over Voices and is the band’s sixth longplayer. The intervals between albums have never been shorter than three years and lately have grown to five.
The musicians always tried to steer clear of the post rock label, preferring instead expressions like instrumental, experimental and noir music. There is a haunting atmosphere to their music, which becomes especially obvious on the new album which the band recorded mostly live in only three days. Some of the music comes with improvisational parts, so that regular song material is hard to find on Tarnish. But that’s also what makes this such a suspenseful record. Even though it contains a dozen tracks that range from three to eight minutes, we rather get the feeling of a holistic piece of art that is best listened to from beginning to end.
The album begins with the quiet A Distant Hello, followed by the energetic Dead End wit its driving bass line, but then more quiet material follows with Frontier which has a melancholic guitar melody superposed on a moving piano part. A first longer piece comes with Echo Man’s Dream, which displays perfectly the dark, brooding mood that permeates the music. The non-linear structure of the tracks guarantees that the music won’t lose its sense of wonder for a long time. A favourite moment comes on the long Writhe which starts slowly enough but then ends in a crescendo of overdriven guitars full of feedback orgies.
If you need to use the post rock label, be assured that My Beloved have created their very own niche over the years. They are close to the experimental soundscapes of Godbless You Black Emperor than to the more accessible music of Mogway, but in the end they do their very own stuff. If you liked their earlier albums and you’re open to a more free-form kind of music, you’re really in for a wild ride full of unexpected twists and turns on Tarnish.
Review from Disagreement.net