|
|
the deep sea darkness, far and wide; The Armada's self-titled debutFeb 08 '11 Write an essay on this topic.
Popular Products in Music
The Bottom Line Though not nearly as strong as expected from Jeff Martin, this album is still worth a listen.
A note: Once again, a review for something that does not exist on this site. The Armada is available on iTunes as well as in (Canadian) music retail stores. Jeff Martin and I go back a long way. Not that he knows I exist, mind you, but I did almost meet him on my 16th birthday. I was hanging out downtown with a bunch of friends in the summer of ’99 when one of them saw him, just buying lunch at a Subway like anyone else, the day after a show I had failed to see. Unlike anyone else, he was dressed head to toe in black, shining in all his rock star glory with a model-thin blonde (also all in black) hanging off his arm. I was too terrified to even go up and get his autograph, so the friend who spotted him did it for me. He is a man of considerable talents. With perfect pitch, his ambitious vocal stylings never go astray. He plays a multitude of stringed instruments from a variety of cultural backgrounds, and even taught himself how to downtune a guitar to sound like a sitar for ease of playing live. His philanthropic side also shines through: two of The Tea Party’s singles, Release and Soulbreaking, donated proceeds to The White Ribbon Campaign (the campaign to end violence against women). The Tea Party (the Canadian alt-rock band, not the new American political movement) started a landslide of change in musical taste for me in early 1997. It’s a sort of chicken and egg problem; did I fall for the band because I was hardwired to like luscious, pitch black, bass heavy music with an Eastern edge, or did the band cause this fascination that still lingers today? Either way, I fell in love with Jeff Martin (their frontman) in my early teens and have held a special place in my heart for him ever since. Not that Jeff Martin has done no wrong. The Tea Party’s last album before breaking up, 2004’s Seven Circles, gave too much production rights over to big names like Bob Rock. The album was okay, but it was overproduced and not anywhere close to the quality I had come to expect from the moody Canadian trio. And so, on that final disappointing note, Jeff Martin, Stuart Chatwood (bass, keyboard, and much of the band’s artwork) and Jeff Burrows (drums) parted ways. 2006 saw Martin releasing a solo album (Exile and the Kingdom) that fell back on a more acoustic sound, reminiscent of the early years with his previous band (1995’s The Edges of Twilight often comes to mind). It was very bluesy, with some very unexpected instrumentation. It’s not every day I hear a banjo coming up in one of my fringe-genre idols’ albums. Behind the times as always, I gave up on Jeff Martin either putting out a new solo album or The Tea Party regrouping, so it wasn’t until very recently that I discovered he got together with Wayne Sheehy (drums) and Gareth Forsyth (bass) to put together another dark trio. Back in 2008. The band is called The Armada, and their self-titled debut has all the darkness of The Tea Party’s Interzone Mantras (2001) and the blues overtones of Exile and the Kingdom, with the unfortunate bright and weak edges of Seven Circles. Even though I had been forewarned that The Armada only had a handful of good songs on their self-titled debut, I went in listening with an open ear. I wanted nothing more than for this to be an album to cling to and let change my world. Martin’s music has, after all, changed and defined my world on several occasions in the past. Some of the best live shows I have ever seen were delivered by this man, and an inordinate number of my favourite albums were recorded by him. I wish I could say that The Armada lives up to everything I had hoped for. What I can say is that a quarter of the album does, while another quarter of it doesn’t directly offend my ears. The rest (songs like Broken, The Rosary, and I Want You) are cloyingly soft and surprisingly weak-willed. Is this the same man who once called down the heavens during a live outdoor show, with the thunder and lightning itself responding to his music? His voice is still exquisite, dark and purring and dangerous, but he does not use this album to live up to the full extent of his power. Only one track on this album blatantly makes my skin crawl. This is Black Snake Blues, which was already recorded on Exile and the Kingdom. On that album, it is a deep, earthy, oily blues song that languishes in its own darkness. It is an amazing track and I highly recommend it. But The Armada took it and fed the vocals through a questionable set of distortions that don’t succeed in making it edgy; it instead becomes annoying. Jeff Martin has never before managed to annoy me. The songs I do like, I really, really like. They’re still too new to my ears to tip the feeling over to love, but they certainly justify the digital purchase of this album. Going Down Blues, Chinese Whispers, and Morocco speak to me of the better days of The Tea Party and Martin’s solo career. Going Down Blues is not a standard blues song. The lyrics definitely are, but the instrumentation is too harsh to fit. The bass is heavy and distorted, the drums are stuttering, and the lead instrument is what I can only describe as an overdriven electronic harmonica. Really. Martin pushes through the song with a sort of lazy drawl, bringing images of the mysticism and superstition of the deep south constantly to mind. Martin’s career is filled with songs of eastern influence, but Chinese Whispers is farther east than any of his other work. The main instrument is a traditional stringed Chinese one; or at least, it emulates the sound. The lyrical content is pure decadence, exploring a god-complex that has shown up before in songs by The Tea Party. Jeff Martin’s arrogance isn’t offensive, however; not with a voice that smooth and sure. The vocals go from laconic and mocking to an outright brutal and deep-throated scream. Finally, my favourite on the album: Morocco. This song feels like a continuation of the early Tea Party single, The Bazaar. Both are forbidding and mazelike, following a girl in distress in foreign lands. Morocco has the heavy topic of honour killing woven into its dark and pure soundscape. This, here, is the Jeff Martin I know and love. 1. Going Down Blues 2. Chinese Whispers 3. Broken 4. A Line in the Sand 5. Morocco 6. Black Snake Blues 7. The Rosary 8. Baby's Come Undone 9. Closure 10. Invocation 11. I Want You  |
| Read all comments (3)|Write your own comment |
by starcollector
by xxxxer
![Revelation [Digipak] by Journey Reviews](http://di1.shopping.com/images/pi/73/9c/e0/2046466476-100x100-0-0.jpg?p=p9.121b7408e4bf5b5d3a57&a=2&c=1&l=8071320&t=120604180509&r=1)
