"The Book of Knots is ex–Pere Ubu bassist Tony Maimone, with the aid of ex–Skeleton Key member Matthias Bossi, ex-Swan Norman Westberg, current Mekon Jon Langford, Sleepytime Gorilla Museums and 2 Foot Yards Carla Kihlstedt, and a slew of other like-minded musical family members. The Book of Knots is a seamless ride through a perfect Swans-derived squall: early-'80s-derived sturm and drang, with the occasional no-wave guitar solo and/or feedback that sounds like a seagull fight in a Dumpster behind a clam shack.
Underwater strings, pipe organ, shortwave radio transmissions, and banjos add a swirling, seasick undercurrent to the satisfying thwack of drums, bass, and guitar. For a pickup band, the voices heard from complement each other nicely: Langford's drunken sailor, Bossi's expansive (and pretty!) wailing, and Carla Kihlstedt's unhinged widows all walk through the song "Tugboat"; and the bass-heavy Cro-Magnon crunch of "Crumble" and "Boston to Bombay" are even better. Rockers who attempt sea chanteys usually make them sound like Weill-esque elegies to heroin, but the best songs here are as big and bottomless as the deep blue, with just enough added saltwater taffy sweetness to pull you into their wake."
The album morphed organically from a few musicians in the studio recording material they had written with a nautical, narrative, conceptual theme in mind, to a collective of featured artists. The artists on the album are all inter-connected by bands and friendships and circumstance. No one was commissioned so much as drawn-in through the circles of connectivity. Well over 40 different instruments can be heard on the album. The songs are woven together creating a tale of longing, despair, loneliness, mortality. The narrative is a labyrinth of connections, or knots, tying each segment of the story to the sea.
This is easily my favorite concept albums of the last decade, tales of the wrenching experiences of seamen and the unforgiving beast of our seas. You can smell the salty dankness below deck filling up with the thickening foul stench of freshly hunted whale oil burning in there lamps. The maddening cries of disheartened sailors rings inside the ribcage of the vessel, drinking away sorrows of friends submerged and rotting in the abyss.
Just as soon as the stars through your sextant tell you land is near, waves rip through your ship and swallow your crew. Lungs explode with salt water, crew dismembered and chewed by sharks. Somehow you make it to dry land, yet your nightmares of the sea are ever present and cannot be drowned away with the bottle.
On any of your nautical travels, remember The Book of Knots.
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