Holy Island

Delivering their debut album soon after forming, Sister Ray Davies is the duo of guitarist Adam Morrow and engineer Jamie Sego, who runs Alabamas Portside Sound, a studio housed in the former Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. They became fast friends when Morrow played sessions there for John Paul White, Donnie Fritts, and others, but anyone expecting music from them in the territory of rhythm & blues or country is going to be very, very surprised. An outlet for their shared love of shoegaze acts such as Slowdive and Ride as well as related sounds like late-60s fuzz and the noise pop of Yo La Tengo, Sister Ray Davies (a fusion of the Velvet Underground song and the Kinks singer) was chosen off an old list of Segos, in part because they thought it captured their mix of "Americanness and Anglophilia." Once they committed to playing together, they quickly knocked out an album before they even chose their name. The resulting Holy Island takes their sound experiments in an even more ambitious direction as a concept album inspired by Morrows remembering the mystical Lindisfarne, an island off the coast of northeast England that he visited while on tour. With a recorded history dating back to the sixth century, it originally harbored a monastery, which was destroyed during the Viking invasions and later re-built as a priory. Named for the saint who founded the original monastery, "Aidan" offers a vaguely Verve-like dose of 90s, groove-based shimmer, but with extra layers of fuzz obfuscating ringing melodic guitar and impressionistic phrases like "Time doesnt fade" and "Heartache standing on the shore." First, however, they set the scene with the eerie, drum-less "Lindisfarne," which evokes floating -- or perhaps flying -- over the sea with its insistent, repeated 16th-note guitar patterns, wave-like crashing washes of noise, and heavy vocal reverb. Holy Island arguably reaches its giddy, soaring peak with the driving "Big Ships," although the more synth-heavy "Cloisters" gives it a run for the title. While some of Holy Island is danceable, some is dreamy, and some is pure atmosphere, these characteristics come together on the six-minute closer, "Morning Bell," which, with more crashing water sounds alongside footsteps and an actual bell, seems to leave us shipwrecked rather than safe in bed as we awaken from a dream. ~ Marcy Donelson

アラバマを拠点とするロック・デュオのファースト・アルバム。"Iona"を筆頭に、アンビエント/ドローン色が濃いドリーミーな音像を描いた曲が多い。全体的にはたおやかな雰囲気を醸しつつ、"Big Ships"では初期のジーザス・アンド・メリーチェインに通じるノイジーなギターを響かせるなど、静と動を出し入れする豊富なアレンジの妙が光る。
bounce (C)近藤真弥