Charalambides
A Vintage Burden CD (KRK68)
release date: May 10. 2004.
- There Is No End
- Spring
- Dormant Love
- Black Bed Blues
- Two Birds
- Hope Against Hope
'A Vintage Burden' is the eagerly awaited new record from Christina Carter and Tom Carter, known as Charalambides. It is an album of spooked cosmics, beatific psych guitar workouts and haunting vocals, making for a euphoric listen. Having focussed on the torment and anguish of the human condition with harrowing previous album Joy Shapes, it seems Charalambides have taken some time out to relax into a new blissed-out song cycle , more reminiscent of their early albums like Market Square and Union. Charalambides are the undisputed chieftains of the American free folk movement, always looking forward with regards song structure and sound, with this album the group have moved more surprisingly into the lyrical realm, with Christina singing a melodic vocal line on all of the tracks except Tom Carter's epic 18 minute bottleneck blues jam 'Black Bed Blues'. The ambiguity is still there with some songs, "Let it shine, it will shine" harmonizes Christina on 'Spring' an ode to all things transitional and hopeful. "There is no control" Christina confesses on the truly moving 'Two Birds' which she has been playing extrapolated as part of her solo set recently. But now more than ever there's heartbreaking narrative woven through the lush guitar fizz and drone interplay. On 'Dormant Love' Christina sings "We meet on the third day, of the year of the heaviest snow... and I will never meet you again" and I want to believe I'm involved in the story and lost in the cyclic nostalgia, before the lap steel swirl and pluck is drawn out into the regimented pull of the refrain. I think the lamenting e-bow swoons towards the end of the song really lend a texture of the nights drawing in and closing around the listener like fog, blankets, drifting snow, regret. From opener 'There Is No End' with it's soaring vocal holding a quivering note of trepidation to final track 'Hope Against Hope' filled with its guitar echoes, chimes and mesmeric patterns which spin out quietly to a natural end, A Vintage Burden is the most beautiful and complete album Charalambides have delivered to date, it is the most exceptional record I've heard all year.