Last month, your reviewer copped a bit of flak for espousing the fogeyish notion that the singer from This Town Needs Guns had a similar style to Crispin from Longpigs. Gawd knows what the boo-boys will make of this review then, because I swear to God that Robert Stevenson, the vocalist from local progressive rockers A Silent Film sounds rather like Peter Gabriel. Oh, and the band occasionally sound like Genesis.
Not all the time, I’ll freely admit, but there are undeniable echoes reverberating through the four songs that make up the band’s icily impressive EP, ‘The Projectionist’. Witness the minimalist but muscular drum figure at the start of ‘Chromatic Eyes’ or Stevenson’s spooky tenor on ‘The Lamplight’. Above all, the production throughout, giving prominence to reverb and employing multiple synth textures is highly redolent of eighties opulence. That said, a feature of the band’s style is that everything is subtle and controlled. Not something you could ever apply to the Eighties.
As for the songwriting, at first I thought there was barely a tune on the record-there are certainly no obvious radio hits, although the wonderful ‘Sleeping Pills’ really should be. In fact, the vocal and instrumental melodies are all there, but they need five or six plays before they issue forth, blinking into the sunlight.’The Lamplight’, for example, is an atmospheric, sophisticated love song which needed a few listens before iIcould shake off the shock of all those old synthesisers and minor sevenths. For some reason, the spirit of Seal’s ‘Crazy’ haunts the first half before a big guitar solo carries all before it. The song is unified by a deliberately diffident nervousness, which paradoxically, only extremely confident musicians can carry off.
More to my taste, but maintaining the feel is the highly original ‘Six feet of Rope and Revenge’, a sort of existentialist gallows ballad. The only precedent I can think of is the Band’s ‘Long Black Veil’, which also tells the tale of a condemned man, although the latter was ruined by a lack of seriousness. ‘Six feet’ feels more authentic, and nearly every detail seems to chill the blood, notably the uncanny, discordant vocal harmonies and the hushed economy of Stevenson’s singing, as if he himself has to weigh his words for fear of his life. The understated backdrop of anonymous synths, anxious, clicky drumming and urgent guitar is masterful.
Next, insinuating itself, python-like into the consciousness and below comes the insanely beautiful ‘Sleeping Pills’. Marvellous as the chorus is, I particularly like the originality of the instrumention. For example, the shimmering marimbas at the start are not just a clever introductory flourish, but form the backbone of the entire song, and their combination with the guitars is gorgeous. A facile comparison with early Coldplay could be made, but the audacity of that marimba banishes such tedious thoughts. Also, the song, in it’s own low-burning way, rocks: Chris Martin’s maudlin lot never rocked in their lives.
When I first heard A Silent Film at the Punt a couple of years back, I thought they were a bunch of highly-talented poseurs who had all the chops to make cool, sophisticated rock music, but lacked the ability to write tunes. I take it all back guys. I’m sorry, I was wrong. But I was right about Stu and the fookin’ Longpigs.