A stark image of a magpie adorns the cover of Salter Cane’s second album; magpies are famously apt to pick up bright shiny objects. The Salter Cane musical magpie works in reverse it picks over the dark things, like Nick Cave’s voice and oeuvre. Nick Cave may not have invented the genre that sounds like ‘Night of the Hunter’ looks, he just perfected it.
Others have trodden this path too, Two Dollar Guitar for instance have meandered in the vicinity and ‘Anomie’ finds Salter Cane in the depths of that particular forest. It’s a claustrophobic world, black and white, high contrast, it is music noir. The grind is relentless, the music may only have the barest of touches yet the sketches still illustrate the impenetrable emptiness, ‘Something Broken’ perpetuates that the only certainty is death. Their vision of the darkness is a compelling and simple one, they don’t over dramatise or overburden the songs with weight, the songs aren’t hammer blows, more the flap of a raven’s wing. The guitars are feathery touches, the violin a murder of crows flying over a solid coal seam of rhythm. The vocals are typically deep, not apocalyptic but touched with tragedy like a preacher patiently explaining the philosophical premise that is hell, rather than promising fire and damnation. Of its kind it is a fine example of balance and in maintaining its balance it should appeal beyond the narrow confines of the genre that it serves.
Tracklist
1 Black Swollen River
2 Sorrow
3 Anomie
4 The Truth Is Nothing
5 Something Broken
6 Amelia
7 The Angel Choir
8 Cut It Down
9 Maudelaine
http://www.myspace.com/saltercane
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