Release Date: November 11, 2011
Folk music seems to be working through a period of stagnation. A good number of entirely generic new folk bands dropped debut albums in 2011 and even a few hugely popular folk outfits that did release albums in ’11 (Fleet Foxes and The Dodos to name a couple) ended up feeling a little tired this time around. That’s not to say there weren’t any great folksy songs last year, there just wasn’t a whole lot of mind-blowingly fresh stuff either.
Luckily, The Gertrudes are here with their third full album Till the Morning Shows Her Face to Me, where the band ends up mixing in some really weird, crazy stuff with standard acoustic folk. While it doesn’t always pay off perfectly, it’s good to see someone out there trying something risky.
The best example of this is probably the album’s super catchy opener, “Derby Girl.” While “Derby Girl” features a pretty common chord progression as its backbone, the song is an intense experience of the terse strumming of acoustic instruments driving the song forward, accompanying banjos, explosive flashes of brass and singer Greg Tilson’s vocals switching between cocky and violent on the fly. It isn’t a song you could listen to forever, but it’s a hell of a ride while it lasts.
Surprisingly, the fast paced “Derby Girl” is followed by a few slower songs. “Six Jars” is a calm, lazy song driven by some twanging banjo and hearty vocals; “Dreams” is a ballad featuring a haunting female singer, shuffling drums and a bit of harmonica to accentuate the guitar plucking. Both are good songs that manage to meld together the band’s ridiculous number of instruments nicely, but they seem a little less crazy and inspired than some of the other songs on the record.
Luckily, things get really interesting again with “Good People” which starts as very minimalistic, vocal-driven piece but halfway through it rapidly picks up tempo and adds in some psychedelic synthetic noises, becoming a mash up of classic Stereolab-style electropop and southern bluegrass. It’s entirely unexpected, uncalled for, and absolutely jaw dropping. It’s probably the definitive moment of the entire album.
Unfortunately, surprises like this are just a little too uncommon: “Good People” and “Derby Girl” are proof that the band works really well with faster, braver songs, but most of the songs on Till the Morning Shows Her Face to Me are slow and somber. They’re really well done and still feature a diverse selection of styles and instruments, and they still definitely deserve a place on the album; it’s just a shame that they take up so much of the album’s run time when the band has proven capable of writing some hectic and thrilling fast-paced jams.
There are so many conflicting elements at play here that Till the Morning Shows Her Face to Me could have easily been an unfocused mess, but The Gertrudes manage to juggle all these instruments rather well, and even in the most chaotic moments the songs still feel controlled and focused. It isn’t perfectly refined right now, but it’s a worthwhile genre exploration for anyone looking for something different.
The Gertrudes Till the Morning Shows Her Face to Me tracklist:
- “Derby Girl”
- “Six Jars”
- “Dreams”
- “Good People”
- “Flashbulbs”
- “Carolina”
- “Summer Plans”
- “Yellow Yard”
- “Heartland”
- “Lonely Days”
