dark shores Archives - Various Small Flames

Wake the Deaf’s Top 15 Albums of 2012

Jon Doyle — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 10:05:00 +0000

The year’s drawing to a close, the world’s not ended (yet) and so it’s about time we got round to compiling our ‘best of’ list. Our 15 favourite albums of the last 12 months are:

15. Damien Jurado – Maraqopa

(Secretly Canadian)

14. Sand Circles – Motor City

(Not Not Fun)

13. Converge – All We Love We Leave Behind

(Epitaph)

12. Advance Base – A Shut-In’s Prayer

(Orindal)

11. Strand of Oaks – Dark Shores

(Self Released)

10. Actress – R.I.P

(Honest Jon’s Records)

9. Christian Löffler – A Forest

(Ki Records)

8. Tim Hecker & Daniel Lopatin – Instrumental Tourist

(Software)

7. Holy Other – Held

(Tri Angle)

6. Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan

(Domino)

5. Field Report – Field Report

(Partisan)

4. The XX – Coexist

(Young Turks)

3. Japandroids – Celebration Rock

(Polyvinyl)

2. Evening Hymns – Spectral Dusk

(Shuffling Feet / Strange Ways)

1. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!

(Constellation)

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Strand of Oaks – Dark Shores

Jon Doyle — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 12:49:00 +0000

Strand of Oaks’ Timothy Showalter writes songs concerning a much wider range of topics than your average artist. From giants in bowling alleys to dystopian futures to Dan Aykroyd missing John Bellushi, he has covered areas that most ‘serious’ musicians fail to reach. The impressive thing is how he uses these often bizarre tales to paint a believeable picture and convey all-too-real human emotion. Song writing as clever and nuanced as his would pack a punch sung by a tone-deaf parrot, a voice like his would make the most insipid and cliched verses affecting. Showalter has both and here is beginning to master them. With the help of John Vanderslice in production, Dark Shores sees his songs become quicker and shorter while losing none of the punch of his previous work.

Dark Shores is an album about space. According to various interviews it began as a concept about space exploration and wars but the human element came to the fore. The album is still influenced by space, but rather than flying saucers and lasers, the ‘space’ here is an empty vacuum, the ultimate isolation. From the opener ‘Diamond Drill’, with a closing refrain echoing ‘Its a lonely life’, you realise the album is not going to be the most upbeat listen. ‘Satellite Moon’ and ‘Dark Shores’ further the imagery of space as emptiness. ‘Maureen’s’ and ‘Little Wishes’ are full of the same hope and regret that made ’Bonfire’ so enthralling. ‘Last Grains’, a song set in a not-so hard to imagine broken future about just that, is quick and desperate, capturing perfectly the antinomic pressures put on modern persons juggling family, employment and social status. ‘Trap Door’ clings to a chink of light in darkness. These are songs crafted carefully to entwine the fantastic and the recognisable, perfect examples of his paradoxical use of fantasy to portray reality.

Showalter is not afraid to change his sound to suit the stories they tell. The early version of ‘Spacestations’, recorded for the brilliant Shaking Through series, was packed with epic synths and was worlds away (no pun intended) from the acoustic singer-songwriters he is often compared with. Since, the song has been striped back, synths replaced with a more familiar guitar, but the switch highlighted just how versatile Showalter can be. Leave Ruin was classic folk strumming, Pope Killdragon experimented with metal-tinged noise, and now we have sci-fi synths and succinct rock. His voice and lyrics would be effective against any musical backdrop and Strand of Oaks can therefore go in any direction. I for one cannot wait to follow.

Buy Dark Shores on CD from Ten Atoms or digitally via Bandcamp.

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New song from Strand of Oaks

Jon Doyle — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 11:14:13 +0000

Strand of Oaks, aka Timothy Showalter, has recently released a second track from his upcoming album Dark Shores (the first being Spacestations from Weathevane Music’s Shaking Through series). The new track is entitled Maureen’s and will be far more familiar-sounding to fans of his first two albums than Spacestations, which was quite a departure from his signature sound. I’m getting serious Jason Molina vibes from it, which can only be a good thing.
Dark Shores by Strand of Oaks

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