Good music always has a way of finding you, particularly when you need it most. I first came across As Tall a Lions’ self titled sophomore release in the summer of 2006. Little did I know it then but that relatively unknown album would form the soundtrack to the peaks and troughs of my life and appropriate a prime piece of real estate within the murky recesses of my heart. Every smile, every sigh, every tear and scowl, played out to these songs at a time when guitar driven indie-rock was king and the tender melodies were consequently relegated to the bargain bin.
Underpinning their engaging indie rock/pop hybrid is Dan Nigro, vocalist extraordinaire, all-round nice guy and protagonist of random dreams. It seems that these days, vocalists aren’t born. They’re too easily cultivated. They’re double tracked and over dubbed to within an inch of their lives but Nigro remains one of the few exceptions. He doesn’t just sing, he croons, he howls, he lilts in his engaging falsetto and is in possession of one the most phenomenal voices to assail these ears in forever.
Nigro’s warm tones temper the dark and introspective undertone of these songs. The opener, Stab City immediately enforces the album’s melancholic point of reference. It’s constructed around an ethereal melody but it’s the sauntering falsetto croon, tenor sax and trumpet which set the ominous mood. “My heavy head is full of debris, sometimes I wish the city would sink in the sea,” Nigro mutters in a breathy vocal, as if imparting a closely guarded secret.
The lyrics fall off the tongue with their own particular rhythm. They oscillate between a dispirited pessimism and a misplaced sense of optimism. They are well written, almost poetic, shimmering with starkness.
“Dear I fear that we’ve gone wrong, you’ve always hung me from the gallows, but you don’t want love keeping you awake at night,”, Nigro intones on the slow burning paean Where Do I Stand. Be Here Now adeptly espouses their soul rock sensibilities and builds to a climax amidst swirling guitars and the warm timbre of that phenomenal voice. “It’s been a good life, I’ll be sad to see it go,” Nigro laments in his lilting falsetto.
There’s sentimentality in A Break a Pause despite the loping, “I feel so down”. Its pessimism engages rather than detracts, as Nigro’s barbed lyrics take aim at the “evening virgin cotton nymph” who’s only good when she’s on her back. The sparseness of just an acoustic guitar accompanying Nigro’s mellow tones on the rueful I’m Kicking Myself (a live version of this song on YouTube and is worth seeking) lends it an arresting sense of sadness. There is a comforting familiarity in the lyrics as Nigro tenderly recounts the last breath of a failed relationship and the heart wrenching realisation that no-one is irreplaceable:
“They say that anything that can be replaced,
I found another girl to pass the days,
She is beautiful she has your face,
There is nothing time will not erase.”
And yet, in spite of all that has come to pass – and whatever will come to be – these songs are doggedly optimistic. Ghost of York is a wonderfully sublime slice of ambient indie-pop. Song for Luna, a standout track, is an archetypical summer song with its sharp guitars, dreamy vocals and hypnotic samba rhythms. The sombre piano and soaring chorus of the sanguine Maybe I’m Just Tired and the meandering melody of Love Love Love (Love, Love) – with a breathy Nigro singing of love, love, love in a wonderful display of sonic porn – dispel the sadness and the overwhelming sense of dejection of that which has preceded it.
There’s a masochistic comfort in listening to these songs and I’m reminded of a line in a poem by Stephen Crane. The narrator stumbles across a desert creature eating his heart and he asks if it tastes good. “It is bitter-bitter,” the desert creature reveals, “but I like it because it is bitter, and because it is my heart.”
These songs are what they are. They’re disconsolate tales that revel in their sadness. Yet, they also embrace it – albeit with a misguided sense of hope – because when you’re at your lowest ebb, and there is no solace, you desperately cling to anything you can to pull you out of the mire. These songs may be bitter-bitter but this is exactly what you want. Admit it, you like this album because it is bitter and because it is your heart.
