plorentz's Full Review: Set the Woods on Fire by Art In Manila
Art in Manila is the name of Orenda Fink's new band. Formerly half of the icy-voiced, southern gothic, indie-folk duo Azure Ray (with Maria Taylor), Fink proved herself the more rocking and exotic of the two with her 2005 debut solo album The Invisible Ones - a collection of stories about social outcasts and the paranormal. And if Set the Woods on Fire, Art in Manila's debut record, still concerns itself with matters of the spirit - she's got things like freedom and power on the brain - it also comes across as more grounded in the often ugly day-to-day realities of relationships sexual and political. As with Azure Ray's records (and Maria Taylor's) though, there's something a little distancing if not outright forbidding about Art in Manila that makes listening to Set the Woods on Fire feel a little bit like reading Doris Lessing for a spring semester British Lit course: it can be a bit of a chore.
That's not to say it doesn't offer some immediate rewards. "Our Addictions" is a locomotive rocker with an artsy kraut-rock edge and a complex lyric that speaks to an unhealthy personal relationship as much as it speaks to our unhealthy relationships with those in power. The addictions here aren't about drugs or alcohol, but about security and complacency. "Set the Woods On Fire" is just as incendiary as its title would suggest, as the band brutalize their instruments on hard, choppy rat-a-tat-a-tat rhythms, and Fink's voice rises out with a clear, soaring, decisive call to action. Songs like the weepy opener "Time Gets Us All", "I Thought I Was Free" and "The Game" are reasonably catchy, post-Lilith Fair folk, while "Golden Dawn" offers a forbidding portrait of sexual power in a religious context. But the album's obvious standout is the enchanting and chant-like "Anything You Love", whose sweetly repetitive melody (augmented with haunting overdubbed harmonies) and 6/8 rhythms feel simultaneously sensual and mothering. It's absolutely gorgeous.
But Art in Manila don't often concern themselves with the songs as much as they concern themselves with the moods and settings of the songs. There's a dreamy, otherworldly quality to even the most song-like of these tracks, but Set in the Woods on Fire is composed of sounds more than verses, and the sounds often feel like they've been dug out of the earth, or fished out of an old shack in mildewed cardboard boxes, or conjured up in some strange voodoo ritual. Witness the birdlike vocal textures that weave in and out of "The Sweat Descends", or the stormy, cavernous atmospherics of "Spirit, Run", which sounds like nothing so much as a ritual gathering of southern swamp ghosts. It's all quite intricate and lovely, and though it's not often immediately accessible or memorable, many of the songs seem to gather strength over repeated listens. If nothing else, this record (which comes in a slim, bi-fold, carbon-neutral sleeve) is a perfect soundtrack for windy autumn evenings spent watching the trees turn into grey skeletons.
- - - - -
BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
"Set the Woods on Fire" by Art in Manila
Saddle Creek Records
Released 8/7/07
Produced by Art in Manila
41 min.
SONGS: Time Gets Us All - Our Addictions - The Abomination - I Thought I Was Free - Set the Woods on Fire - Golden Dawn - Anything You Love - The Sweat Descends - Spirit, Run - Precious Pearl - The Game
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.