Review Summary: A beautiful, passionate, and original melding of experimental music and folk.
It's been a while since I've heard an album and been instantly been blown away. It's been even longer since I put an album on repeat for 7 straight listens. Red State did both.
With a weird combination of melancholy, folky Americana (the kind you can only find in dingy towns in the midwest), cracked and bent synths and drones, and a hint of No Wave psychadelia, Gowns have really brought something new to the table. Not very often in this day and age of millions of myspace bands and homage after homage to legends of the past do you find something genuinely new, but they've done it.
It begins with "Fargo", a euphoric depiction of being completely narcotic in North Dakota, complete with organ and a digitally created choir, with Erika Anderson listing off their drugs of choice, without pride or remorse. Then comes the dirge of "Rope", once again using the chance to turn Anderson's voice into a choir, this time with overt gospel influences.
Some other highlights are the powerful, overwhelming depiction of "seeing the cracks in everything" of "White Like Heaven", using Corey Fogel's drumming to bring things to a crescendo of dirt, noise, and consciousness. "Subside" uses clicking percussion a la Autechre and pairs it perfectly with the droning, dissonant violins and faint, ominous whispers. "Clawless" strongly portrays inertia and hopelessness, with the drones and a capella harmony creating a vibe of desperation so strong it's hard to not burst into tears (and it sounds like they're having the same struggle). "Mercy Springs" wears their drone sound heavily on its sleeves, again using the technique of "White Like Heaven" to explode into furious abandon, followed by haunting vocoded harmonies. "Advice" features a bit of insight into the nature of addiction, and "Cherylee" ends Red State on something of an optimistic note (though still down about the present), giving a bit of hope to the listener saying "you gotta write down all your symptoms even though it's obscene / you gotta stay there underwater til you finally come clean", even though from the sound of her cracking, almost crying vocals that she's trying to convince herself more than you.
All in all, I can't help but want to just listen to this album again and again, marvelling at the beauty and passion of this band. They've crafted a piece of music uniquely american, tragically beautiful, and undeniable in its power and originality. It's a statement that really could only come from the 00's; there's no other album out there that shows brutally honestly the sort of OTC desperation and couchlocked inertia that exists in the here and now of the US.
Just don't call it freak folk.
