Spike Field

While Maria BC recorded their first EP in a single room and their quietly more expansive full-length debut, 2022s Hyaline, within their Brooklyn apartment, a year later, Spike Field finds the classically trained mezzo-soprano at the home of a family friend. At their disposal was a squeaky, out-of-tune piano that reappears throughout the album once its introduced on the opening track, "Amber." The songs mournful pace, stuttering electronic tones, corpulent acoustic guitar plucking, intermittent distortion, and that off-key piano set the tone for an album that continues very much in the melancholy vein of its predecessor while taking a generally looser approach to arrangements. Later, following the brief, glitchy instrumental "[ A backlit door ]," "Haruspex" (a term for those trained to read omens from the entrails of sacrificed animals in ancient Rome) features a warm and organic if somber rock with shuffling drums, interwoven guitar and piano lines, lyrics like "Everyone wants their hard-earned break," the occasional struck metallic object, and touches of feedback. These delicately off-balance textures slightly shift across the track list: "Watcher," about witnessing a loved one endure hard times, includes a celestial vocal trio (consisting of Maria and two friends), and the spacy, circular "Mercury," which addresses the possibility of self-destructive behavior being healing, cycles through sparse, alien-sounding passages and buzzing harmonic choruses with soaring vocals. Spike Field continues to explore human behavior right through to its closing title track, whose steady eighth notes and syncopated instrumentation eventually give way to lurching piano chords and the notion that the past is part of us, however we decide to relate to it (or not), leaving listeners with thoughts as haunting as that piano. ~ Marcy Donelson

友人宅にあった調律の狂ったピアノの音色を全編で鳴らすアメリカン・ゴシックなフォーク・アルバム。ドローンやフィードバックも用いて作り上げたスプーキーなサウンドが印象づけるのは、シンガー・ソングライターよりも音響芸術家という言葉が相応しい、このベイエリア拠点のアーティストの個性。躍動するビートやギターの轟音がフォークの一言に収まりきらない広がりも加える。
bounce (C)山口智男