Review Summary: If you walk away from this record unaffected, please, for your own safety, see a psychiatrist.
I sincerely hope that Emily Gray, vocalist for the now-deceased post rock band ‘Meanwhile, Back in Communist Russia’, hasn’t really led the life that her self-penned monologues seem to indicate. I really, truly mean that, and if you were to listen to the group’s debut album,
Indian Ink, you would too. I honestly cannot remember the last time I left an album feeling such an overwhelming sense of pain, such a longing for the well-being of the writer. Seriously, this album got so under my skin that I could feel it crawling up my arm and cutting off my air. If you walk away from this record unaffected, please, for your own safety, see a psychiatrist.
Ok, I won’t lie. If that really were the case then I should be lying on Dr. Buber’s chaise lounge right now describing to him what my first sexual experiences were. No, my first impressions of Indian Ink didn’t involve goosebumps and oxygen masks but rather raised eyebrows and slight smiles. I was immediately intrigued by the shaky female ramblings and thought the music, while a tad generic, was pretty great, taking cues from Mogwai with it’s quiet looming passages being followed by explosive but well-controlled climaxes. After a few listens I would have settled with a high 3/3.5 and occasionally brought the record out again when the mood took me. But then I did some research and looked up the actual words being spoken in their Slint-esque fashion (but female and never sung). I followed the passages against the music in a trance. There was no other way to follow them. Gray’s tale is one of a girl who is living a life blotched by horrific sexual encounters and drug addiction. But the tale is told in such a way that the listener cannot help but feel the pain of the protagonist surging through their veins. Although the monologues are not drenched in ambiguity, the imagery is written with such an acerbic but deeply personal style that it becomes impossible not to become engrossed. Delivered with trembling lips, Gray’s word’s penetrate to the point where you become almost involved in the story, fighting for her life.
The bruise at the base of my spine is butterfly shaped, dressed and downstairs. My mother's eyes flinch away from a skinniness I'm oblivious to. Lank-haired; skin splotched with bruises like split wine. Some few drunken strangers trying to lock their eyes into a body that’s slowly disappearing, sitting-curled in on myself : at the centre of this, there must be a sort of purity if I just work myself in a little deeper. The bones that catch the cold and hold it must point somewhere. Waking, snared in the limbs of someone I never see again - an unfamiliar voice trying to pin me down with sleep-fuzzed concern. He's slack. Flesh bags round his waist and I'm repelled, I'd do anything not to have to touch. Curling tighter around a hunger that cuts to the bone, trying to find the centre that must be round here somewhere.
Listening to ‘No Cigar’ again, after having taken in the lyrics, the music takes a new dimension. From tender, quiet and poignant, it becomes brooding, haunting and simply shattering. When pitched against a voice where you know what words are being spoken, the instrumentation on Indian Ink explodes with anguish. The drum machine beats and computer effects on ‘Delay Decay Attack’ are no longer looked at as detriments that take away from the songs effectiveness but rather add to the song with a grey gleam which shines with melancholy. ‘Acid Drops’, which sounds like it could have been included on Massive Attack’s Mezzanine, tells of the character’s drug overdose. Trudging through broken backbeats, it builds up slowly and, just like the drugs effect, explodes for just a short second until drifting into an sleepy piano section. The music on Indian Ink literally becomes part of the story, it follows the pain the character follows. ‘Morning After Pill’, the final track, hurts. There is no happy ending. The words, delivered with their warranted cynicism, whisper over their mic with the help of gloomy guitar work, until suddenly, the final fight is launched and they both charge with intensity, the drums and guitars menacing with rage, the voice bleeding with desperation. The fact that the record ends with the words “I couldn’t see the point” epitomizes this record’s despondency. It hurts.
Indian Ink is proof that lyrics can play a part in the world of post rock. Without them, this album would have been shot down as another solid but uninspired release. With them, it has become a gem. A very dusty, battered gem, but a gem nonetheless, and a gem which holds an immense amount of value. Now, you should do three things. Find this record, listen to it a few times. Next, look up the lyrics, and play it again. Then listen to it once more and be transported to a bleak dystopia of depression, drug addiction, and near-death, where this is no light at the end of the tunnel and there is no means of escape. I guarantee you’ll enjoy it.
