Spear In The City

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Spear in the City is the fourth album by Los Angeles' Bodies of Water and follows a gap of six years between records. During that time, bandmembers worked with other groups (Music Go Music, the Confessions, the Coast, and others) and continued to record as Bodies of Water without actually releasing any music. Still led by spouses David and Meredith Metcalf, they eventually collected a set of songs that they wanted to share. The resulting album diverges a bit from both a trend toward less exuberant, more intimate fare and their more celebratory, Polyphonic Spree-like work. Here, they embrace the chorale-type vocals and spiritual ambience of their origins, but with a darker, more serious tone. That tone is accompanied by a certain amount of social and cultural commentary, including on "I'm Set Free," which imagines parting with material goods: "I am truly free from the screens I gaze into..I even threw my credit cards into the sea." (Eventually, he's also free from a long list of electronic music styles, including vaporwave). The record opens rather ominously with the song "Dark Water," a minor-key, if grooving dirge about the ravages of a flood. Later, the elegant title track captures the essence of orchestral '60s ballads along the lines of Mancini and "The Windmills of Your Mind," with only subtly backed arpeggiated guitar under vocals. David Metcalf handles the majority of vocals with a haunting, Nick Cave-like quality that comes with an air of noir-ish suspense, and arrangements that highlight ensemble vocals and animated percussion without encroaching on the realm of stomping banjo folk are, at the time of release, a novelty. ~ Marcy Donelson