Album Review: Traineater

New York collective The Book of Knots have only given themselves a three-album lifespan. The first self-titled album was an ode to seaside towns and the third is promised to be devoted to aeronautics. The second, Traineater, is the melancholy tale of the fall of the great steel and mining town in the American Midwest.

The four-piece - who have played alongside Sparklehorse, Elvis Costello, Frank Black and Pere Ubu - are joined by guests Tom Waits, Carla Bozulich, Megan Reilly, Jon Langford, David Thomas and Mike Watt. Together, they paint haunting portraits of cities like Cleveland, Youngstown, Toledo and Detroit; places that were once the definition of American motivation, progress and industry, but are now ruined monuments of a bygone era. The guest vocalists fade in and out like transients sharing hard luck stories.

The noisy and discordant clank of View From The Watertower and The Ballad Of John Henry is reminiscent of how loud the rust belt cities were before the factories moved overseas, while other tracks are a disconcerting reflection of the quiet desperation that characterises these cities now.

With scraping, swirling guitars, soaring string arrangements, rupturing bass and plate-shattering drums, Traineater chillingly chronicles a part of America left bare by globalization.