Mercè Rodoreda’s novel Death in Spring paints nature it all of its overwhelming power, the Catalan author imagining a society turned ritualistic and strange in the face of such force. Living in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Curfews is a band with a better appreciation than most of nature’s power, enduring months of sub-zero temperatures and disabling snow. Corey Sustarich (guitar, vocals, lyrics), Nick Erickson (drums, bass, noise), Mike Maple (guitar, vocals, production) and Dave Daignault (writing credit) spent one such period with a Tascam Portastudio to produce a reaction not as drastic or bizarre as Rodoreda’s townsfolk, but a reaction all the same.
A seven-song album, Psalms to Strip to, inspired by the fiction, poetry and art consumed while locked away against such harsh conditions. The work of Jim Harrison, Gabriel García Márquez, William Blake, Jeff Vandermeer, Herman Hesse and the letters of Vincent Van Gogh all shaped the record in one form or another, though lead single ‘Death In Spring’ takes its inspiration from Rodoreda. A song from an ugly world, a fallen world subject to the violence of the wild as though undergoing some form of punishment or test. Erickson’s drums compel the track forward as though toward some great reckoning, Sustarich locked into the momentum and committed to its frenzy.
In the Spring
When the world is ill
Fury and blind will
Consumes everything