The For Carnation

"The eight minutes of Empowered Man's Blues approach slow-motion funeral music: drums hardly drum and guitars hardly ring while McMahan begins to whisper his story (think Tim Buckley fronting Portishead) but then, somehow, the dirge mutates into quasi-minimalist bass figures, dilated drumming tempos, violin wails, electronic noises, and the voice is suddenly propelled in noir melodrama (think Nick Cave sleepwalking into the set of "Twin Peaks").
The band drowns the depressed confession of A Tribute To, into a syncopated dance groove, a repetitive guitar figure and a lively repertory of ghostly noises.
Tales emerges from a nightmarish beginning to a psychological tension created by aggressive drumming and dark keyboard motives. Over eight minutes, the thick texture creates the kind of suspense that the Doors or the early Pink Floyd would generate in their extended jams. Moonbeams, the longest track at nine minutes, features the most tender melody in an extremely slow crescendo.
The light swing of Snoother is the closest thing to a conventional song. Being Held is an instrumental track that simply builds a rhythm around a ringing guitar tone. This is music of extreme patience and intelligence, that shows no passion and no emotion because it is not interested in short-term dividents but in long-term investments: only at the end of a song one realizes how many things took place, only at the end of the album one realizes how much richer the world of music has become. "

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