Souls On Board
Blood Face
6 Track, EP (2007, Low Transit Industries)
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Related: Souls On Board.
Helmed by a vivid, coolly electric guitar tone – the voltage feels integral, for reasons not yet tangible – the second EP from Melbourne’s Souls On Board confirms that their melange of atmospheric soundscapes, plangent stadium rock and jazzy, experimental pop lacks for neither vision nor a sense of reality. Blood Face is an adult work, in that its passion is matched by technique and that it refuses to accept youthful melodrama as an acceptable outcome. When Anthony Petrucci howls about “dirty fingers in the clay”, on ‘Fingers’, it’s both an accusation and acknowledgment of what the world has rendered.
At points, particularly ‘This City’s Full Of Spies’, they’re content to cut up and enjoy the velocity, but with the likes of ‘Souls On Board’, an ominous, textured lament that spirals into the realm of the sensual as that guitar sound flickers like tracer fire over the Broadcast-esque keyboard parts, they remake rock & roll as a ritual we’re drawn to without ever understanding. In a way it’s not necessary to end with ‘In My Hand I Have This Apple’, an ethereal mood piece, because you can already sense its presence ghosting beneath the prior songs. Souls On Board shouldn’t disclose too much, but nonetheless they feel on the verge of discovering something essential within their music. They’re already closer than too many of their contemporaries will ever get.
by Craig Mathieson
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