When I asked Brian last Thursday what he wanted us both to review this week and he suggested Feral Harmonic I was actually kind of excited. Not because I really like Old Cranes or have any connection to this album – actually, I was excited for the complete opposite reason. I had never heard of Old Cranes nor Feral Harmonic – though I have heard of both cranes and harmonicas. So naturally I thought this would be an album of really mean waterfowl playing harmonica.
A back up member of Old Cranes
Boy was I disappointed – and not just because the band was made out of people.
There’s really nothing I actively dislike about Feral Harmonic so this won’t turn into a passive aggressive review of things I hate (cough, Brian reviewing Massive Attack, cough). The problem was, Old Cranes aren’t really doing anything I actively like that much either – I just can’t shake the feeling that what I’m listening to is just a worse version of other things I’ve listened to. If I can make a super irresponsible and obtuse metaphor, Feral Harmonic is what you’d get if Fleet Foxes took a bunch of coke, forgot to harmonize, and all had laryngitis. So not bad – but not good either.
My immediate impression upon first listen was, “Hey, this sounds a lot like an under-produced, noisier version of Neutral Milk Hotel.” Now I’m all for under-produced and noisy, after all, I do like Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah! but Old Cranes have applied these two adjective to a sort of mountain-folk-rock (excellent use of Pitchfork hyphen genre creation there) and I don’t like the results.
I agree with Brian that the energy is certainly there, but it’s just not being applied in a direction I really want it to go in. The sound of the vocals is pubescent – it’s stuck in the awkward stage between folk-rock clarity and more raw yelling. It’s clear, controlled yelling – basically, it’s Glenn Beck singing to you. I don’t want Glenn Beck to sing to me.
Maybe I’m coming off pretty harsh – Feral Harmonic isn’t an album I mind listening to, it’s just that I would never consciously decide to play it. I actually really like some of the things Old Cranes does instrumentally and found myself most enjoying the tracks that didn’t feature vocals. There is a really cool breakdown at the end of “Sweet,” but that just rolls into the plodding country/western guitar strumming of “Under,” and all of a sudden, there’s that voice again.
Lastly, and this may just be the mp3 I’m listening to, the production on this album is awful. The high-end sounds come off as really tinny and distorted to me – especially the symbol crashes (which happen more than once on the album). It’d be a great effect, if it didn’t end up sort of mushing all the top end frequencies together into this really obnoxious noise. But again, that may just be my copy of the mp3 files.
It’s safe to say Old Cranes’ Feral Harmonic didn’t do much for me. The combination of some things that I didn’t like along with nothing that I found redeeming enough to overcome these negative factors probably means this one is out of the rotation.
Tracks that were less Bleh
“Sweet” – I really like the instrumental part at the end
“Intro” – Kind of a weird choice, but it’s just another track with lots of cool guitars going on
Tracks that were extra Bleh
“Under” – Too much of a change of pace from “Sweet” and frankly just a little boring.
“Southern Radio” – Boring, overdone folk guitar part on top of lyrics that you can’t really understand.
If you like what they were getting at but want to find someone who does it better, Chris recommends
Fleet Foxes (both the self-titled and Sun Giant EP) and Sun, Sun, Sun by The Elected
If you thought this was irredeemably terrible Chris reccommends
Heartland by Owen Pallet (formerly Final Fantasy) – all the same complex instrumental parts but more cohesive with better vocal work.
