This is my first encounter with the genre-fusing trio Trevor’s Head and we were off to a bad start. Initially, listening to their new album A View From Below, I kept wishing they would stick to punk and stop taking side trips into prog and stoner. But after an additional couple of spins, as I got more familiar with their sound, my resistance to their approach to music making died down. Because it appeared that what they are doing was actually working and quite well at that.
A View from Below is the band’s fourth full-length, but they have been pursuing their special sound mixture from their very beginnings. Its roots, I have learned, are to be found in the trio’s collaborative approach to song writing where each band member is supposed to add something of their own to the stew. Considering the fact that some bands work as tyrannies with some band members functioning merely as worker bees, I must say that I quite like such an egalitarian method.
The album’s eight tracks will thus take you on a journey bursting with variety. Opener Call Of The Deep, for example, has an excellent punk rock intro sequence before mellowing down and switching to dreamier and more musing sounds, but only to be followed by shouted vocals and some stoner meatiness. Under My Skin continues hectic, restless and antsy, while managing to be simultaneously spaced-out and doomy. Several tracks feature multiple vocal lines, since all band members sing, and in addition the singing style changes from track to track. There are songs with an overall 70s vibe, like Grape Fang and Rumspringa, but that also feature a more recent sound element, like a stoner bass line. Among a well of diversity, Elio probably sticks out the most, the song’s folky tunes, partly produced on violin and flute, sound organic and close to nature – before the foreboding bass riffs set in, that is. Nope, I did not see those riffs coming.
The band say that “lyrically many of the songs on A View From Below, are a reflection of the hardship that many have endured over the past few years and continue to endure now”, and their display of numerous musical influences does a very good job representing ever-changing emotional states. But the genre mixing is seldom clear cut which means that it takes some mind gymnastics to keep actively listening to the album.
What to say in the end? Maybe this: The undefinable object on the album cover does a good job representing the music. Trevor’s Head are definitely original, exploring new paths, trying actively to be different. In a sea of copy cats, that’s certainly to be lauded.
(7.5/10 Slavica)
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