Obody are a band from Caroline, New York, consisting of four core members and a revolving cast of collaborators. They have recently put out a five song EP called Except For A Song, a release almost as long as some albums and which defies simple description. The press release does as good a job as I ever could when it describes it as “deliberate but methodical…a forest of soundscapes and confessions that will make the hair on your neck perk”. Lead Peter Vincent’s noirish baritone will draw inevitable comparisons to Timber Timbre, but rest assured that Obody are very much their own unique act.
The release opens with ‘Stone’ which simmers for over ten minutes, creeping through the undergrowth like the roaming spirit of a dreamer with morbid contemplations:
“Take these bones away
cos they just hold in place
something that longs to be spread far and free
and some things just need to be released”.
The track has a vague, dreamlike quality that fans of Old Earth will appreciate, all held together with strumming guitar and warbling cello, and lines such as:
“What if there’s a place of no separation
between our creations
and all I think is all you see?”
Next up is ‘The Devil’s Reeds’, a sinister song about giving in to evil (“The devil’s reeds do not silence / just because you arenot listening / when you let that
sound take you over / you are king”), followed by ‘Trees in the Desert’, which continues with the opaque and tenebrous imagery, inhabiting a shadowy alternate reality. ‘Spiders Web’ plays like a
sad and lonely fairy tale from the creepy depths of an enchanted forest, a
tale the Brothers Grimm rejected for being too dark and morbid. Rife with the isolation and entrapment
of a spiders web, complete with a skittering click on the edge of hearing which sounds ominously similar to the jointed legs of a giant arachnid. But despite this, the final
lines somehow transform the track into an unlikely love song:
“And you can
have anything that I have
and you can be anyone
that I am
and you can see
everything that I can
and you can hold me
in the spiders
web”.
The final track, ‘No Sensation’, is slow and sedate with
melancholic instrumentation and a fleeting background rumble, what can only
be described as the aural manifestation of dread. This lends the track an oppressive air, like tossing and turning in a nightmare:
“Maybe I
would stay up all
night
figuring some way out
because I hear the pauses
so much more
than I hear
the breathing in and out from my chest
the heartless projections of what I want
won’t let me rest”.
I guess what I’m getting at is that this is not some kind of sugar-coated easy-listening. This would be dream pop if dream pop was like real dreams and not the fuzzy, loved up ones it’s usually so preoccupied with, all twisting corners and illogical transitions, vague sensations of both familiarity and unease.
You can buy Except For a Song via Chicago’s Already Dead Tapes on transparent blue cassette (NB. there are only 100 so if you want one then I’d grab one as soon as you can). If you miss out on a cassette (or just don’t want one), you can get the album as a digital download via the Already Dead Tapes Bandcamp page.