Tracklist:

1. Torn By Wolves
2. Bless Your Blood
3. Black Wall
4. The Desert Is A Circle
5. Attar
6. Wolves’ Pup
7. River Of Transfiguration

Ben Chasny has been making some of the best outsider folk music for some time now and has continued to evolve and hone his craft with each successive album. School of the Flower showed him expanding his sound with the addition of more percussive elements courtesy of fellow Comets On Fire member Chris Corsano. Skittering drum work appears again on The Sun Awakens with the noticeable addition of electric guitars providing new textures for Chasny to craft some engaging drones.

The album opens with “Torn by Wolves” which is a short instrumental that serves well as an introduction to some of the weirder songs to follow. “Bless Your Blood” follows and begins in much the same manner as “Torn by Wolves”. Chasny sings the lyrics in a low whispery voice and is later accompanied by some high echoing sighs that lift the song up into the clouds as it drones away for another two minutes. “Black Wall” makes its purpose clear from the get go with a distorted electric guitar drone dominating the sound. Beneath this Chasny plays a quick paced folk tune not unlike the title track on School of the Flower. In the end Chasny’s fuzzed out psychedelic tendencies previously displayed in Comets On Fire win out and overtake the song entirely.

Immediately following “Black Wall” is the most perplexing part of the album. “The Desert is a Circle” sounds so out of place on this album, especially coming right after “Black Wall”; it made me do a double take the first time it played. This isn’t to say the song is bad on its own, it’s just that the style and feel of the song is so at odds with the rest of the album that it sounds like he slipped a Calexico instrumental in the middle of an otherwise thematically coherent work.

On the other side of this is another bit that left me a little confused. “Attar” follows “The Desert is a Circle” and seems to pick up where “Black Wall” left off as if the previous track didn’t exist. “Attar” begins with a fast paced circular guitar part and quickly begins to spiral out of control and as the song progresses drums and electric guitar are added in turning it into a bubbling, broiling mess. Just as the song starts to really take off Chasny cuts it short, though. At a running time of only 2:53 it felt like “Attar” could have gone on at least twice as long before wearing out its welcome. “Wolves’ Pup” brings the first half of the album to a close with a recapitulation of the theme introduced in “Torn by Wolves” minus the percussion.

The second half of the album is dominated by a single track, “River of Transfiguration”. Sounding like a re-interpretation of the Stooges’ “We Will Fall”, some listeners will surely be turned off by this epic drone track complete with ominous death chants and skittering drums. “We Will Fall” is an extremely divisive song where you’ll either love it or hate it, and the same will most likely be the case for “River of Transfiguration”. Hopefully listeners will have the patience to sit through its entirety at least once before passing judgment because the song definitely gets better as it progresses with its low droning guitars steadily increasing in volume and intensity before fading out just shy of the 24 minute mark.

Despite a few hiccups, The Sun Awakens contains some of Chasny’s best work as he continues to explore new possibilities without straying too far from his folk roots. Like last year’s School of the Flower, this album contains a little something for everyone though this one leans more towards the drone fans. There will most likely be a lot of disagreement about which songs are the best and which direction Chasny should explore further in the future, but this in no way takes away from the quality of the material present.

MP3 Samples:
Black Wall
Wolves’ Pup

This entry was posted on Friday, May 19th, 2006 at 10:01 am and is filed under Record Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.