Artist: The Wars
Title: Healings
Genre: Indie Rock
Release Date: 23rd March 2012
Label: Wintergrain
Album Review
Sometimes things seem quite odd. There’s a distance lesser than expected 100 meters between theirs and my own rehearsal room door and nevertheless I have to confess that THE WARS crossed my way for the first time in an enjoyable small talk with the bands manager after one of my own band’s shows. Shame on me for the fact, then although THE WARS officially came into existence in 2008, its protagonists are no unknown faces within Berlin’s independent music scene. For instance Chris Kowski, THE WARS´ voice and guitar player, who was founding member of LUNAR BAY, a band that not only included former members of the amazing MIA (and evoked the interest of PORCUPINE TREE’s Steven Wilson), but also gained a certain local prominence by a well-dosed radio airplay, or Bass player Gernot Pohle (also a former part of LUNAR BAY), whose name is closely enmeshed in the musical underground of Postdam/ Berlin.
As mentioned, both ways crossed in 2008 and realizing some kind of correlating creative chemistry, the following year saw the release of their debut ‘Rift’, what gained complaisant regards of audience and critics and led to several sampler contributions (e.g. the doubtless reflecting ‘Darkness before Dawn…’) and supporting plots for bands like Ulterior or UK Decay. The next output came in 2010, named ‘Succubus’ and it continued to increase the bands reputation and helped to extend their acting radius. So the logical step to follow was a fulltime album, what (in a great, almost philosophical dualism to the band’s name) is entitled ‘Healings’ and sees the light of the day these moments.
So what reveals the lifted curtain?
Indeed the first word that came in my mind while listening to the chapters of ‘Healings’ was “urban”. Yes, I want to call it urban music. It’s big, full of nooks and crannies and hard to survey; it’s dirty, but here and there it reveals a view into the sky; it is glued with presence, but every hole in the ground disgorges a fume of nostalgia. Okay, that city is not a new and unknown territory. It’s the grey and bleak row of houses of JOY DIVISION’s Manchester and it’s the frantic and dervish-dancing melting pot of INTERPOL’s New York, but guided through the streets you feel like watching it from a slight different angle, like a dysfunction of your memory (You know these stirring déjà vu experiences!). ‘Toga’ is a good choice for coming in, cause it gives you that feeling of reaching a top after a long hard walk, rewarded by a view over vastness and a setting sun, before ‘White Out’ takes you down the valley, to human touched layers with moving and impelling rhythms, a great prancing bass and Kowski´s voice (whose analogy to INTERPOL’s Paul Banks seems clear here, but fits very well in the rough mixture of gentle anger and subliminal melancholy).
The album’s title track sticks to the point and seems to be the most obvious reference to the early work of New York’s Indie-Rock whiz kids, caused by this unexplainable inertia, that slow-motion melancholy, swimming in the slipstream of the vocals, which seem to freeze speed and motion, banning the twitching bass, the frisky drums and the rain-like guitars inside the blurred frame of a vintage photography. ‘Parsec’ is a brilliant blend of Punk and what we would call “Indie-Rock” today, means a melodic structure engraved in a rough surface, oscillating between excited riot and resigned sadness, like shrugging while causing some pain. The BAUHAUS-like beginning of ‘Enclave’ seems a hint, when the following tunes unveil a gloomy, layered construct, filled with wafting vocals, spherical keyboards and an awesome whip-like bass, creating a hypnotizing depth, an undertow that pulls down and repels you, like colliding with an emotional magnet. ‘Safari’ is soiled Pop music, something you could expect on a late Peter Murphy album. Catchy melodies, electronic dashes and a drum that sounds irritatingly modern. Nothing that leaves an imprint, but something to hum along while listening to. Easy breathing….
Not so ‘Jet Stream’ what brings us back to the pleasurable atmosphere of the early eighties (let’s take the period when KILLING JOKE were triumphant!), but dressed in a kind of presence when an impelling drive, howling guitars and sloping keys drift towards a mouth, where energy meets harmony, a symbiosis you might recognize in the musical language of congeneric species like EDITORS or even (yes, again!) INTERPOL. ‘Nature’ is a quite lovely track. Sunny melodies meet a grinding bass-line for hitting walls of distortion and half step-harmonies, which release ear catching melodies again after collapsing. A clever arrangement and real joy to follow. ‘Succubus’ (taken from the same named 2010 EP) charms with its retro-synthies and the machinegun-like drums, whose colliding creates a special kind of tension, whirring all around. And not later than now it’s time to announce that the guys are very skilled in creating pleasant melodies and sticking choruses.
‘Ethon’ is no surprise anymore. The band knows what it is good at. A marching rock song with unpredictable directions of rhythm and energy, wrapped in minimalism and monochrome pathos… the strangeness of a beggar in a king’s robe. The healing process ends with ‘Coast’, a strolling outro with an amazing atmosphere of blurred velocity and lomographic nostalgia, closing the circle in a warm and sweetly melancholic arc, what makes you breathing the same way as if closing an old photograph album. The sugar-like and comforting wistfulness of a memory regained…
So let’s summarize: ‘Healings’ (finding its literal sense in the personal reflection of contemporary political and historical events I don’t presume to evaluate) is a solid rock of moving elements. What some define as classic Indie-Rock are great songs circling between Punk, Pop and Rock’n’Roll, between agitating depth and a glittering surface. It owns a special and comforting kind of melancholy, squirming through the chords and words making you uncertain whether to move or to muse, music with question marks that forces you to go behind, to enter the city walls for finding answers. It’s untamed and ambiguously and so it’s upstage and attracting arcane. I for one got caught up in the maelstrom of the city….
Tracklist
01. Toga
02. White Out
03. Healings
04. Parsec
05. Enclave
06. Safari
07. Jet Stream
08. Nature
09. Succubus
10. Ethon
11. Coast
Line-up
Chris Kowski - Vocals, guitar
Gernot Pohle - Bass
Felix Roll - Drums
Website
http://www.thewars.net/
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 8
Sound: 8
Total: 8 / 10
Buy the album here!
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