FAITH AND THE MUSE - The Burning Season

William Faith and Monica Richards, aka Faith & The Muse, arguably the best dark-rock band the Nineties gave us, return four years after their last, splendid album "Evidence of Heaven" with a strong urge to shed their skin, to renew and modernize themselves. Of course, "The Burning Season" still inevitably starts out from their classic, markedly esoteric brand of death-rock (naturally, since Faith cut his teeth alongside figures like Rozz Williams in his Shadow Project and Christian Death), but it also introduces new elements alongside their usual blend of electro/acoustic arrangements, now launched at supersonic speed over devastating electronic rhythms, now frozen into rarefied atmospheric vignettes: towering over everything is the magnetic presence of vocalist Monica Richards, occasionally accompanied (and in some cases even replaced) by guitarist and arranger William Faith.

But so as not to cause too much disorientation for either the fan or the newcomer, "The Burning Season" opens faithful to their old style, with a powerful, spectral, visionary sound, in the short intro "Bait & Switch" and above all in "Sredni Vashtar", one of the best "possessed" dances in their repertoire, a perfect example of what is meant by the term "death-rock": the stylistic mastery of the arrangement and the exquisite taste of the production stand out in "Boudiccea", a lengthy foray into territory very close to shoegazer ecstasy. It's at this point that the album turns into a strange hybrid of dark-rock and elements borrowed from "club culture", which considerably diminish the effectiveness and immediacy of their sound, at times letting typically trip-hop atmospheres prevail (in the hypnotic title track and in the dark chant of "Failure To Thrive"), at times throwing caution to the wind and flirting with the coolest strains of techno (the soft pulses accompanying the otherwise pleasant "Whispered In Your Ears" and "Visions"). So, amid genuine lapses of taste ("Gone To The Ground"), it's hard to find moments that recall the thrilling sound that rightfully made the band an institution within "gothic" rock.

"Relic Song" and "Prodigal" — the latter a dazzling, sensual episode of melodic death-rock, the former sickly and occult — fortunately bring to mind that we are indeed listening to a Faith & The Muse record. The ambient, almost new-age interlude of the lengthy "In the Amber Room", with fairy-like trills reminiscent of Cocteau Twins and chamber-music arrangements, is one of their finest achievements in the other realm their music has always inhabited: the more ethereal and transcendent one, and a gorgeous "Willow's Song" closes the album on delicately neo-folk tones.

But the album as a whole is indecisive, confused, mannered, straining toward solutions that don't seem to suit the band's strengths particularly well, perhaps tired of repeating the same old formula yet apparently unable, for the moment, to set off in a direction that is both innovative for them and, above all, credible and coherent with their music. Fortunately, the old, well-worn stylistic devices that Faith and his lady have been offering us for ten years are still there to save the record, if only by the skin of its teeth. A minor misstep, one hopes, and one that can easily be remedied.

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27/10/2006