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$6.99
If you feel like you have grown old and decrepit waiting for New Zealand's the Renderers to release another album to follow up their 1998 Siltbreeze release A Dream of the Sea, you're probably not too far off the mark. Recorded in 2003, following a Creative New Zealand grant in 2000, mastered and mixed in 2005, Ghosts of Our Vegas Lives is Renderers singer/guitarist Maryrose Crook's first solo album and the first new recordings by New Zealand's primordial alt-country band the Renderers in nearly a decade. The wait has definitely been worth it, as Ghosts of Our Vegas Lives represents a significant leap in the career of the Renderers as they approach nearly two decades of existence. The album features ten dreamlike dark, soulful songs that burst with life (as well as its opposing force). Recorded with the then Renderers lineup of Maryrose on vocals and rhythm guitar, husband Brian Crook on lead guitar and keyboard, bassist Thom Bell (also in David Kilgour's backing band the Heavy Eights), and famed NZ drum basher Robbie Yeats (Dead C), Ghosts of Our Vegas Lives oozes through the speakers with the arid barrenness of a Clint Eastwood desperado Western and the subterranean muculence of a David Lynch rabbit-hole headtrip, giving life to the dead-end tales of an unnamed couple tethered to each other in a forlorn doom scenario. The Renderers' singular approach – half thoroughly tweaked garage/country/psych propulsiveness and half restrained noir-beauty – fleshes out each of the album's songs with the perfect dose of restraint and release, and the band has never sounded better on record. One could easily envision these songs being performed in a sordid West Texas nightclub just as easily as a smoky San Francisco ballroom or a grimy Dunedin pub. Taking forefront on the album, obviously, is Maryrose Crook and her distinctively restrained, seductive voice, who rides the crest of the psych-surf manic blowout "Sea of Total Darkness" at one turn and then assumes the spotlight in the ominous rumble-ballad "Dream That You're Driving." The soft, velvety timbre of her voice is itself an invaluable instrument throughout, providing an effective counterbalance to Brian Crook's gamut of sick, thick, phlegmed-out guitar blasts and purposeful, 11th hour gallows stringwork and the rhythmic clatter of Bell and Yeats. Fleshing out the band's sound on certain songs are cellist Francesca Mountfort, violinist John White, and cornetist Lesley Johnson. Along the way, the band manages to evoke everything from the Dirty Three to Palace to the Stooges to the Handsome Family to the Dead C...clean, dirty and in between, you might say. In the long span since the world last heard from the Renderers, Brian and Maryrose bore a child, Rosa Pearl, in 2001, and Maryrose started a career as a painter, with several successful gallery shows in New Zealand to date. Her paintings are prominently featured on the front and inside of the CD booklet and the inner tray card. Brian has kept busy with his myriad side/solo projects and other bands, and has released several CDs with Flies Inside the Sun and under his own name and as Bible Black and Anti-Clockwise (including a new CD on 3 Beads of Sweat). Ghosts of Our Vegas Lives is a co-release between 3 Beads of Sweat and the Renderers' New Zealand-based record label, Tinsel Ears.
1. Under the Sea
75 or Less, 3/8/06
Dusted 2/26/06 Which isn’t to suggest that they’re stuck in place. This record started life as a solo album, and it certainly feels quite different from the Renderers’ other records. That’s partly due to the judicious touches of trumpet and strings that make this their most deftly colored and tonally varied record. But more important, where their other albums liberally feature the deathly croak of Crook’s husband Brian, here Maryrose handles all things singing. Heard next to him, her resigned country twang seems quite sweet; without such contrast, this record sustains a more consistent mood of troubled, dreamy melancholy. Even the songs with brisker tempos seem to issue from some dark corner of the psyche rather than a pair of speakers. Brian might not sing, but he’s still quite present. His splendid guitar leads, which range from the title tune’s distant cries of rue to a Stooges-like wah-wah meltdown on “Sea Of Total Darkness," are the hellhound on Maryrose¹s trail. Bassist Thom Bell (who appears on recent David Kilgour records) and drummer Robbie Yeats, returning after a one-album lay-off, are right behind him, ensuring that things never get too funereal. Ghosts Of Our Vegas Lies signals the welcome return of a band that’s spent too long in the wasteland."
Chromewaves 1/29/06
The
New Zealand Listener 1/27/06 In her own band, too, raw guitar is part of a personal, well-crafted – but never tame or straight – version of country rock. The Renderers have toured the US several times, and played as Will Oldham's backup band when they arranged his visit here in 1997. The title of their new album acknowledges that the heritage of Americana is not the exclusive preserve of American citizens. Despite their affinity with the US, there is something about their music that suggests the South Island. Ghosts of Our Vegas Lives glides along like a long-distance drive over the flatness of alluvial plains. Brian Crook's guitar (also heard in the Terminals and on solo recordings) hums, creaks and whistles like brooding weather. In 1990, when the Renderers' first album came out on Flying Nun, their DIY country sounded more like the Meat Puppets and more like Hank Williams – both more punk and more country – than most of the now less-remembered range of American "roots" rock they might have been compared to (the bands that followed the Paisley Underground on the Los Angeles scene of the 1980s, for example). In the meantime they have only become more distinctly their own thing. This fifth album follows seven years after the last, and was recorded in 2002. Over the years, rhythm sections have come and gone, and this recording sees the Crooks matched with the brilliant, pared-back beat of Robbie Yeats (the Dead C and Trash) and with Thom Bell on bass. The mood, as usual, is dark, but the music is smoother and less rocked up. A tattered velvet, empty-theatre ambience surrounds this dignified and modest music. The best moments for me are where the guitar is let loose on "Blood of the Angels" and "Sea of Total Darkness". Given these preferences, this may not be the best Renderers' album for my tastes, but it is one that ought certainly to be heard on National Radio."
Catbirdseat 1/26/06 |
