Black Heart Procession - Californian Nocturne

Black Heart Procession are the heart of darkness of American indie-rock. Their music, dark and desolate, is the flip side of carefree California rock: a sequence of evocative ballads, steeped in deeply dark tones, rooted in roots music and pushing past country and blues traditions to transform them into more modern, cross-pollinated forms of expression, under the sign of American gothic. A sort of "Calexico of darkness", as they've aptly been described. But the stark, timeless stories of Black Heart Procession elude any stereotype. "It sounds strange that a band from San Diego, such a sunny city, makes such dark music. I'm not saying the surprise isn't legitimate, but I'd like the focus to be more on our music", says Pall A. Jenkins, who together with Tobias Nathaniel forms the core of the "procession".

Curiously, Black Heart Procession began as a side project that Jenkins and Nathaniel started in 1997 in San Diego, during a break from Three Mile Pilot, the band the two had long been part of, which combined post-punk fury with electronic influences, right in the thick of the pre-grunge climate. "Toby and I felt we no longer belonged to that genre and we had a rebellious streak against that scene, so we started writing songs that sounded completely different, with a more immediate and natural working method, starting from sounds and trying to build imaginary atmospheres on which to then construct an actual song".

Jenkins (vocals, guitar) and Nathaniel (piano) were joined by Mario Rubalcaba (ex-Clikitat Ikatowi) on drums to bring to life the debut album, Black Heart Procession 1. An album in the vein of the best "noir" songwriting, from Nick Cave to Smog, from Leonard Cohen to Tom Waits, but also drawing on British new wave (Joy Division above all), dark folk and Black Sabbath. The album also features the sound of an electrified saw, an instrument from which Jenkins draws sharp, anguished sounds: "Someone told me that playing it with a bow could produce a particular sound, and I was intrigued by the idea. We tried it out, and got exactly what we were looking for".

But it's above all with the following Black Heart Procession 2, released by the prestigious Touch and Go, that the Californian band established themselves as one of the most important acts on the American rock scene. It's a procession set to the sound of "funeral marches" never so evocative. Eleven tracks of extraordinary intimacy, able to project the listener into an almost autistic dimension, where the surrounding world seems eclipsed by a black sun. Music, in short, that goes straight to the soul.

Its roots run deep into years of country, folk, blues and electronics, blended with a taste for arrangements of great elegance. Just press play on the opening track, "The Waiter #2", to grasp the magic they're capable of: a cosmic wind blows amid distant howls and debris of disintegrated electronics, until minor piano chimes make their solemn entrance, ticking away metronomically like some metaphysical clock. The theme is one of explosive sadness, the music is bare, essential, dark; an icy mood wraps around all four minutes, painting a boundless, desolate landscape, where Pall Jenkins's listless voice mechanically recites a mournful psalm of lost love. Everything fades away as quietly as it appeared, and with the same rarefied elegance it implodes into a black hole…

Out of this deep space emerges "Blue Tears", the first true "procession" of the lot. An epic accordion, led by the hand of a waltzing organetto and a proud, poignant trumpet, rises into a march capable of bringing tears both of joy and of sorrow. It's virtually impossible to resist being moved, to resist the urge to join this swaying ballad worthy of a village band, be it a funeral eulogy or a declaration of love. Perhaps, simply, an extraordinary hymn to life. A masterpiece.

Muffled low-fi chimes quietly introduce the following "A Light So Dim", which lazily takes over the scene with its "acoustic trip-hop" rhythm, reinforced by hammering piano notes. Seven long minutes that go by as if they were half that, so gentle is the way it cradles this sea swell, which once again bows out amid unsettling electronic nebulae.

Next comes the brilliant folk of "Your Church Is Red", where guitar sparks embroider Jenkins's whisper, accompanied by the bed of a crepuscular organ. The sun, which had peeked through here even as it set, is completely eclipsed by the pale moon of "When We Reach The Hill", the record's second masterpiece. Just the icy sound of a circling moog and a deeply sad acoustic guitar line. Just Jenkins's desolate voice, singing in a subdued tone, like the nocturnal lament of a bard nearing his end… A bitterly cold electronic wind blows through the bare weave of a track that makes essentiality its strong point. If loneliness could sound like something, it would sound like this.

Thankfully things turn to more reassuring tones on the following "Outside The Glass", a brief invocation cradled by the warm sound of a minimal keyboard, amid near-glitch noises and ancestral reverb. There's barely time to savor this delicate lullaby before minor piano chords rain down again from the sky. It's piano, in fact, that's the undisputed star of "Gently Of The Edge", with its liquid phrasing, propped up by the usual subliminal electronics and the barely perceptible breath of a drunken trumpet. Essentiality always dominates, along with an exquisitely refined taste for arrangement. There's never anything missing or too much, everything is measured out with great elegance.

Rhythm resurfaces in "It's A Crime I Never Told You About The Diamonds In Your Eyes", a sweet, sprawling title for perhaps the most energetic piece on the whole record. It's still the piano that opens the dance, this time with more conviction, a purpose then picked up by the drums, almost lashing in their forward drive. Jenkins still expresses himself in his usual lament, but this time his invocations seem to reveal something like a feeling of anger, a firmer resolve.

As if playing a game of light and shade, Black Heart Procession seem almost to enjoy placing songs of different moods side by side. To be clear, the atmospheres always unfold somewhere between dusk and night—the sun never rises over their San Diego—but this slight contrast helps keep the record from feeling monotonous. A case in point is the return to deep blue of "My Heart Might Be Stop", the perfect counterpart to the previous track. Once again it's the piano keys that shake the heart, this time struck with a force that's almost frightening. The trailing vibrations stretch and estrange everything like the most acoustic nightmares of Radiohead.

Next comes the most experimental track of the bunch: the murky indefinability of "Beneath The Ground" shows a closer kinship with the electronics of Sigur Rós, between synthetic percussion and hypnotic keyboard notes. Jenkins's own voice is treated like never before, reduced to a disruptive, impersonal element, wrapped in a dreamlike spiral. The journey ends where it began, with "The Waiter #3", a reprise of the opening track with a slightly more pronounced groove, and with Jenkins sounding more weary, as if worn down by the experience of pain. This choice highlights the record's "circular" nature, almost turning it into a concept album about disappointment and hope.

The "procession of black hearts" has come to an end, but its legacy will forever remain one of the highest peaks of the entire '90s, a dark corner of all post-rock.

Black Heart Procession's songs are "noir" episodes built around spare, almost entirely acoustic settings, with piano to the fore and Jenkins's pained voice intoning subdued melodies that always instill a sense of sadness. "I just hope that in the end people feel good about it, I certainly don't want people to get sad and start thinking about suicide. Like everyone, I try to be happy, and I am, at times", Jenkins explained. The lyrics are stories of troubled love and loneliness, all converging, in some way, on the word "heart", because, "it's true that emotions arise from the brain, but it's more fun to imagine that the heart is what generates them". The following EP A 3 Songs Recording introduces further new elements, adding an extra touch of rhythm and blues, nodding to the Tom Waits of the post-"Swordfishtrombones" era. "We had a few unreleased tracks lying around, we picked the ones that made the most logical sense together, and it was fun".

But with the next full-length, titled—once again—simply 3, Jenkins and co. return to the slow, martial, solemn atmospheres of 2, though tweaking the rhythm section somewhat, adding samples and electronic drums. Nick Cave's influence grows even stronger, in majestic, anguished ballads built around piano and guitar: from the hypnotic lullaby of "Guess I'll Forget You" to the country march of "A Heart Like Mine", from the funereal blues of "We Always Knew" to the tender melody of "The War Is Over". The record closes apocalyptically with "On Ships of Gold", a long spiritual marked by storms rumbling in the background and the faint voice of Kazu Makino of Blonde Redhead (recorded during a phone call with the band). By reworking the very roots of American music, from country to blues, Black Heart Procession have crafted an unmistakable style, as nocturnal as it is moving, the result of elegant production and impeccable instrumental skill. A portrait of America in black and (above all) white, evoking the most unsettling landscapes of William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor.

Plenty is new on the fourth Black Heart Procession album, starting with the title: the band led by Tobias Nathaniel and Pall Jenkins (now Paulo Zappoli, his mother's maiden name) chose an Italian title, albeit a grammatically incorrect one, Amore del Tropico. From the very first track, “Tropics of love”, you can already hear the shift in sound, with Latin rhythms and textures bordering on bossanova. Other sounds and timbres new to the band soon surface too, like the obsessive, '80s-style synth of “Sympathy crime” and “The visitor”, and the buoyant rock of “Did you wonder”. It's not a full-blown revolution, though, since there's no shortage of dark, twilight-toned tracks (the best examples being “The water #4” and “The invitation”); rather, it's a general enrichment of the band's tonal palette, also evident in a greater use of strings and the addition of female backing vocals. These sunnier sounds and moods are confirmed in languid ballads like “A cry for love”, or in “Why I stay”, which follows the path laid out by the opening track, with clear echoes of Calexico.

This shift hasn't diminished the quality of Black Heart Procession's music one bit. Maybe not every track is fully successful, and perhaps trimming 2-3 songs would have sharpened the focus of this new musical direction, but while a certain repetitiveness and fatigue creeps in toward the end, patience is rewarded by the closing “Fingerprints”, which reconciles us with the familiar atmospheres of old — a twilight, melancholy track in the best tradition of the San Diego duo.

Four years pass before the release of The Spell (2006), but the wait doesn't feel agonizing, perhaps because Black Heart Procession no longer have anything left to prove. A few imitators have popped up, but as always it's attitude that makes the difference, along with the intensity of the expressive act, which in Black Heart Procession's case is remarkable, even within the composed linearity of their songwriting. Take “The Replacement”, for instance, which unfolds like a thriller, with violins partly easing the tension skillfully built by a menacing piano melody and nervy rhythmic stop-and-go. A classic Black Heart Procession track, some might say, but we think we can spot a few very small new touches on the album too, especially a more pronounced guitar sound.

Darkness remains the chief marker of Black Heart Procession's expressive signature. “The Waiter#5” confirms as much, cementing that sense of continuity with their earlier work. Tracks like “Gps” and “The Fix” nod to the Paisley Underground sound of the mighty Thin White Rope, but also to the twisted, distorted indie-rock of Pall's previous band, Three Mile Pilot. As for “The Waiter#5”, we mentioned it as a factor of continuity, but it's also something of a repository of tried-and-tested tricks. The dark atmosphere, voices emerging from the shadows, a melodic violin in the distance, anguish within and without… it's a film Black Heart Procession have already screened before, one they've turned into a stylistic manifesto. It's worth knowing that, whether or not the track still captivates — and it genuinely does — is an entirely different matter. There are several more bewitching ballads besides: “Tangled”, “To Bring You Back”, “The Spell”, all forcefully asserting that their creativity is still at its peak.

The Spell can be considered a “neutral” album, in the sense that Black Heart Procession simply sound like Black Heart Procession. There's nothing major that's new, as there was (partly) with Amore del Tropico: just the usual great songs conjuring up ghosts and deserted cities. And the night that swallows whole the gnawing pangs of conscience that devastate and disfigure.

After three years of total silence, Pall A. Jenkins and co. make themselves heard again with their sixth record, simply titled Six, thus explicitly returning to the sequential numbering of their albums, which had been dropped after the first three. Although this is purely a surface-level detail, it carries symbolic weight, acting as a kind of bridge back to those earlier records and thus beyond the two mediocre albums that preceded it.

And indeed that's exactly how it turns out, since the thirteen ballads on Six reveal more than a few flashes of a class untouched by the passing of time — handled, if anything, with real mastery and channeled into a broad array of songs that recall both their finest moments and the knack for easier melodies shown in the recent past.

The result is a well-balanced record, in which even the more immediate tracks, such as “Witching Stone” and the well-chosen single “Rats”, still manage to sum up all the essential elements of Black Heart Procession within simple, loosely choral melodic structures.

Although some traces of the uncertainty of the previous two albums still linger, Six gradually reveals a long series of “notes from the underground”, following the usual blueprint of murky atmospheres, fluid melodies and arrangements tinged with a decadent, refined darkness. In particular, the three tracks dominated by piano come closest to the band's past peaks, once again summoning demons that, as ever, are all bound up within the depths of the human soul: thus, the swelling iteration of piano notes and the mantra “don't say a word, just disappear with me” on the opening “When You Finish Me” sound almost like an invocation, a kind of manifesto, or rather a warning that the old spirit hasn't faded yet. That feeling is then confirmed by the mirroring piano pièce of the closing track, though it never quite reaches the sick, shadowy intensity of “Drugs” (not coincidentally the sixth track on the record), a heartfelt, aching ballad the likes of which we hadn't heard from Jenkins's voice in some time. Now that the numbering has resumed, let's hope the band doesn't stop counting again.

Contributions by Paolo Sforza (“Amore del Tropico”), Antonio Ciarletta (“The Spell”) and Raffaello Russo (“Six”)

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