Corvus B. are a duo from Newburyport, Massachusetts who exist in a niche that’s not exactly crowded with other bands. The project is as much about Charlie Lake’s poetry as it is about Zack Ellsworth’s music, resulting in a sound that’s like a cross between Mountain Man, Told Slant and Listener. It is apt then that their new EP, France, Later, is dedicated to “the people that fall through the cracks”.
Opener ‘glass machines discovering water’ introduces us to the unique sound of Corvus B. It’s built on frantic banjo and lo-fi percussion and rapidly delivered spoken word poetry, with lines like:
“last night I was on the Merrimack river
and the lights were watching me so I stared back
and they looked like they were make of plastic
and I felt like I was made of plastic
but we’re really just made of metal and glass bits”
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‘a lampshade plagues with poison ivy’ is similarly constructed, but the drums take a backseat, leading to a quieter, more insular atmosphere. “I want to tell the tree how tall it’s gotten”, Lake sings, “without the forest laughing at how small my view is”. The track picks up momentum for a little while around two-thirds through, although even that little burst of energy doesn’t last long. Death and decay are never far away on ‘birds nesting in shoes on telephone wire’, with its rotting birds and oxidation and talk of building your own coffin.
‘children in grass while trees grow taller’, with it’s haunted banjo and gentle field recorded ambience, confronts the album’s themes most directly. The issue of gender (or rather society’s perception of it) is raised most explicitly in the line “you don’t like my leg hair / cause it doesn’t match my gender / but I don’t have one”. Another theme is the yo-yoing emotions that many have to try to deal with, the double bind of dealing with personal troubles while still retaining compassion and patience for others. Or, as Lake puts it:
“on days where I feel big
it’s hard to remember I’m not
on days where I feel small
it’s hard to remember the ants I’ve stepped on”
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Closing track, ‘snow where it’s usually not’ descends into an almost post-rock catharsis, capping the album with a sense of release, though whether it’s through transcendence or chaos is up to you.
I often have a hard time with poetry, mainly due to failings of my own than of its writers. No matter how lyrical and well-written a verse, I can’t help but read it as overblown and pretentious, something that’s often amplified when hearing a certain class of performance poets who adopt that oh-so-sincere tone and read their own work in someone else’s voice. But this poetry isn’t like that, teamed with the music it takes on a meditative quality, the earthy, pastoral imagery of moss and bugs and leaves adding to the effect. Listening feels like walking deep into the woods at sunset, clearing a space on the forest floor to lay down in and feel safe.
You can get France, Later on a name-your-price download or handmade CD from the Corvus B. Bandcamp page or Skip, Jump Records.
