Review Summary: Quietude and beauty.
Hazel Steps Through a Weathered Home is the triumph of all things quaint, melancholic and
odd. It’s not odd in a way that is weighty to tackle head-on, but it would be wrong to call the gentle warble in B’ee’s voice (a moniker who’s relation to our most beloved buzzy boy is sadly, nonexistent) as something entirely comforting. The record itself rather feels finely attuned to the metaphysical steppe that is somewhere between a fascination with nature and a full-blown fleeing of consciousness into a realm of meadowlarks and swaying fields and wandering satyrs and towering spires of oak. Ok, that’s enough pretentious psychedelic rants for the time being. Why the
*** should you enjoy this? The themes backing the record are a monolith to tackle and for sure foray into acid-induced hippie snobbery, but just what makes this album feel so warm and level with this in mind?
Simplicity and authenticity are pivotal factors in what this record accomplishes. B’ee never strays from his melodic crackling croon and seldom implements more sounds than would keep the record from sounding whimsical and aloof. There are a variety of instruments on display-acoustic guitar and bodhran make up the bulk of it, but there are gentle and well-timed flourishes of violin, piano, and organ that add both spritely energies and one's cold and disconcerting at points (the break in “The Orb Weavers” being a wonderful example of this more sinister energy). However, their implementation is always sparse, not so in frequency in which they show but rather in how full they actually sound. Everything off this record is restrained at all times, as if B’ee is in a constant state of having just woke from a deep slumber.
This is especially evident when the last two tracks (excluding an instrumental rendition of “Orb Weavers”) enter the fray, as they are the quaintest of all. “The Wind That Cracks the Leaves” is incredibly bare bones, such that it sounds as if the entirety of civilization has succumbed to a great plague and the only sound on the earth is the light snapping of twigs amidst a cool October breeze. “Two Towers” is a similar affair, in a different environment. The cold dissipates into a crackling furnace’s warmth, set inside a spacious Victorian mansion in which a lonesome elder can be seen dancing alongside no one, hands outstretched to the ghost of a lover long lost. On both occasions it is just the crooning of B’ee and a gently plucked/strung accompaniment-the former being an acoustic and the latter piano.
There are a lot of themes that unfold throughout
Hazel Steps, even if it can be soothing and simple enough to work as an easy listen, for workdays or cooking or writing or what have you, but this is the final part of the great dichotomy of this record. It’s got a lot of individuality, big-brain metaphysical transcendence concepts, a great variety of instrumental flair on display, but it doesn’t have to be a complex listen. The atmosphere, while both languid and loving at nearly all times, is always gentle enough that it always wears at the tension, and in it’s hypnotism there is much ease to be found. In a world where more is always desired and aggression rises to the surface more often than not, goddamn, sometimes that is everything one could ever want.
