Friday, March 11, 2016

Artist: School of Seven Bells

Track: “Ablaze”

When School of Seven Bells’ (and ex-Secret Machines guitarist) Benjamin Curtis died in late 2013 from T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma, at the shake-your-fists-at-the-sky age of only 35, it seemed like 2012’s Ghostory would be that band’s swan song (not to mention the heartbreaking cover of Joey Ramone’s “I Got Knocked Down (But I’ll Get Up Again)” that the pair released prior to Curtis’ death). A triumphant summation of their sound at the time, it was a compelling enough ending to a story that seemed short far too many chapters. But then it wasn’t. Alejandra Deheza, the other half of the band, announced what would be the couple’s fourth and probably final LP only a few months ago, and it was released at the tail end of February.

It’s not easy encapsulating all the feelings associated with the loss of someone so intimate, and SVIIB really never sets out to do that – recorded in a flurry of activity during the Ghostory tour, before Curtis was diagnosed, it’s a life-affirming and vibrant record. Perhaps even more so than Ghostory, it’s the perfect synthesis of their sound: a wave of sound that reaches to the sky, massive shoegazy riffs, Deheza’s crystalline vocals sliding effortlessly over the top. It’s Deheza’s lyrics that give the record its crushing, if optimistic, subtext. A memorial to Curtis, it’s a travelogue through a relationship that spanned years and peaks and pits. It’s a love story, really – Deheza explains it far more beautifully than I could in this Pitchfork retrospective, but SVIIB is as poignant a memorial as any words.

Opener “Ablaze” is Curtis and Deheza in a nutshell, a titanic pop song that imagines dream pop in a stadium, all bright, piercing colors in a cavernous mix. “You saw the stars in me when I had sunk into the black / you never thought to leave / you were the drug to bring me out from a crushing sleep / you told me all you saw was diamonds / you told me that till I believed,” Deheza sings, wrenchingly. It’s a song that makes you believe grief can be happiness somehow, too. RIP Benjamin.

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