Reviews
Artist:Morton Valence Album: Black Angel Drifter
Label: Cow Pie
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.mortonvalence.com/
It's a brave move kicking off "Black Angel Drifter", Morton Valence's seventh album, with "Skylines Change/Genders Blur", on first listening it has more than hints of being a dystopian maelstrom of confused images, but subsequent plays will tell you it's exactly where it needs to be.
As with predecessors, noire, is the word that you would most associate with the album and then toss a coin between the folk and americana versions being the dominant source on the album. And, like it's predecessors, this is not an album that's an easy to listen to, instant gratification, Morton Valence have long learned that the things really worth having are worth working for.
Two of the great symbols of wide open wilderness are tumble weed and crickets, the former difficult to capture on record, the latter make a number across the album, including a full thirty five minute fifty one second track named after them to sign off the album. At first it almost seems like an artistic indulgence, but actually with a bottle of scotch, a bowl of nuts and a spirit of contemplation, it's a surprisingly good way to end one of "those" weeks.
Vocal duties continue to revolve around Anne Gilpin and Robert 'hacker' Jessett, as they alternately weave around or spark off each other, all the time pitched against a musical sky that's full of fiery stampedes and ghost riders.
It's their first album for Cow Pie, but apart from a new label there doesn't seem to have been any change to the approach, hard, uncompromising, at times brutally so, but it's also a master class in noire and credit to the crickets.
Neil King
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