Album Review: Preaching To The Fire

Perhaps chilled by the prescience of their debut album Unconscious Pilot, which was written in the summer of 2001 and depicted the escape from America during the outbreak of an unspecified war, The Great Depression (duo Todd Casper and Thomas Cranley) took breather for a year or two before returning with Preaching To The Fire.

With a name as overtly gloomy as The Great Depression, the grey, wintry atmospherics should come as no surprise; like Unconscious Pilot before it, the band's inspiration comes from anxiety, paranoia and alienation, but unlike their debut album, Casper and Cranley keep the atmospherics intense and alluring instead of blurred and repressing. To that end, there is no repeat of Unconscious Pilot's 8-minute Meet The Habsburgs. In fact, only one song stretches past the five minute mark, and even then, just barely. The relative brevity of the songs ensures that the sonic details carry more weight than they otherwise might.

Opening track The Telekinetic layers piano, warm ambient washes and gothic guitar patterns, while Make Way For Nostalgia features wistful, lilting horns. Snatches of background conversations filter through the hazy guitars of Somewhere Over The Counterculture, adding a further level of intimacy.

While their recent Prefix EP was distinct for its instrumental work, Preaching To The Fire features lyrics on every track. Written In Coal's vocal refrain of "who did this to you?" is gritty and desperate, while towering centerpiece Lux has the vocals flit between conciliatory whisper and desperate wailing.

The album's final track serves as a perfect sonic capstone to the anxiety and pensiveness that colours the rest of the album. At the same time, it's a fragile and beautiful flourish to a haunting and quite exquisite album. Rarely are darkness and melancholy so appealing.