Review Summary: With O' Shenandoah, Sparrows Swarm and Sing release an extremely long, yet still great, Post-Rock album.
Oh man, this isn’t what I signed up for.
O’ Shenandoah, Mighty Death Will Find Me is only a minute shy of 80-minutes and is divided into a mere four tracks (each divided into its own movements). And trust me when I say that very little about the end of
Warm Blood Within pt. 1 , where almost nothing but pounding drums are audible under all of the noise, brings to mind sparrows swarming and singing. At heart though, Sparrows Swarm and Sing are a Post Rock band. The album’s longest track,
Across Canyons/Canons is evidence enough of this. Across Canyons features conventional build-ups from pretty, ambient sections to heavier climaxes. There is however, as both name and album cover would suggest, a very natural sound to Sparrows’ brand of Post Rock. Lo-fi folky sections are common place and even the album’s opening notes come in the form of a bird’s song.
And don’t let Across Canyons fool you. The track is entirely instrumental and may be the closest
O’ Shenandoah, Mighty Death Will Find Me comes to fitting the clichés of the Post Rock genre. By the time
Mighty Death’s second song, the considerably shorter (though still over 15 minutes long)
Father Death/Mother Nature , kicks in, you are privy to a completely different side of Sparrows Swarm and Sing. The track’s most noticeable difference from its predecessor is the inclusion of singing (singing is present on the next two tracks as well). The vocals are handled by a large group of people, singing together like some poor man’s choir. Not just wordless melodies either, moments of Father Death even include both lyrics and fairly raw screaming/shouting (almost akin to that of I Would Set Myself on Fire for You). Underneath the singing, Sparrows throw in atmospheric guitar, glockenspiel, pounding percussion and (at a later point) lo-fi acoustic chords. Near the middle of the song, melody fades into nothing but clicking percussion and the track’s second (and final) movement, a much less vocal laden, much more ambient affair than the first movement, begins.
Overall,
Mighty Death is really hurt by its intimidating length. The album is nearly impossible to listen to, cover to cover, in one sitting, especially when you aren’t doing anything else (the tediousness of last track
O’ Shenandoah doesn’t help either). But however daunting
Mighty Death’s length is, its music, whether pleasant and peaceful, as name suggests, or intense and noisy, as one will find in a few of the album’s sections, is often superb. This should not be forgotten if/when you are trying to find something new to listen to.
-Dan
