The underground seems a fitting environment for the group, who brood with a distant and dark, and at times tense, sentimentality.
Instrumentation is kept pleasantly simple, with bar-room piano and double bass forming the foundation for most of the LP. Flourishes of spooky effects provide an unnerving overtone throughout, but even they are delivered with a very listenable sense of classic style.
Vocal takes are delivered with an idiosyncratic sense of haunting – the understated baritone delivery is peppered with uninhibited tics and a propensity for milking the life out of respective syllables.
Though the overbearing sense of macabre permeates every aspect of the record – especially in possessed lyrics such as “It’s a bad, bad ritual / But it calms me down.” – there is an obscured sense of distinct irony bubbling underneath.
In the title track, we hear an impassioned recollection of “dickless cousins”, moments of being “cock-blocked, cured, encharmed,” before relenting and resigning into “I should not keep on, I’ll just creep on, creepin’ on.” It’s this reverence for the power of words which elevates Timber Timbre well above the slew of acts burdened by a weighty idolatry for the likes of Cave, Waits and Cohen.
It’s a weird, potent, and overly pleasant mix – an ostensible gothic tinge balanced out by a breezy, fractured beauty.
Key Track: Woman
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: I’m Your Man LEONARD COHEN, Music Of Twin Peaks ANGELO BADALAMENTI
In A Word: Swamp-creeptastic
