For Carnation

A brief but extremely dense parabola, that of For Carnation, a project born in the mid-90s at the initiative of ex-Squirrel Bait member Brian McMahan: two albums and an EP released over the span of five years, punctuated by a profound lineup change that took place in the very four years separating the first "Marshmallows" from this self-titled work, in which Brian McMahan is joined by his brother Michael on guitar, bassist Todd Cook (Shipping News), fellow guitarist and keyboardist Bobb Bruno, and Steve Goodfriend (Radar Bros.) on drums.

For the occasion, the band's core lineup is joined by a long list of collaborators who enrich the sound, shaping its rarefied iterations and frequencies in a hypnotic and essentially psychedelic direction, partly through the use of liquid electronic effects that, while conspicuous, remain sober and always functional to the anguished, languid textures of the songs. Particularly decisive in defining the record's stylistic signature are the contributions of John McEntire (Tortoise) on synths and mixing, and Christian Fredericksson (Rachel's) on viola and string arrangements.

The personal and artistic backgrounds of the musicians involved in making the album make it easy to view it as a kind of bridge between two brilliant strands of American post-rock, that of Louisville and that of Chicago. While this is essentially its main premise, For Carnation don't simply absorb modes of expression already established in previous years; instead, they rework a long series of ideas through their own sensibility, arriving at a result that can't be pigeonholed into any post-rock category, one that can be seen as containing a valid hypothesis for the genre's development and transformation, open to countless suggestions while still remaining conceptually coherent with it.

Having effectively set aside the Slint-derived deconstructions, McMahan and co. move toward an apparent emotional narcolepsy, filtered on one hand through increasingly sparse cadences, and on the other through obsessive circular melodies that don't shy away from gradual crescendos of repressed yet evident pathos.

On the first front, one can sense affinities with the slow-core of Codeine, while on the second the album shows a marked leaning toward a kind of songwriting whose eloquent shyness gains tension through melancholy guitar brushstrokes and a muted vocal delivery, the perfect crowning touch for perpetually dark, intimate, nocturnal atmospheres.

In the conciseness of its six tracks, running just over minutes in total, the album seems to trace a path of gradual spiritual liberation, starting from the surreal catatonia of "Emp. Man's Blues", before slowly and painfully unfolding through murky, breathless snapshots, in which only occasionally does a ray of light break through or a slightly more defined rhythm emerge.

It's the opening track itself that makes clear enough For Carnation's highly distinctive musical formula, entirely built on muted rhythms, centripetal oscillations and string arrangements that heighten melodic torsions whose desolate isolationism isn't relieved by McEntire's playful electronic effects — which, if anything, often merge into the pervasive underlying psychedelic haze.

Having touched bottom, an expressive and emotional zero point, right from the start, the album proceeds through gradual layering, keeping the mood steady while expanding its structures, also through a greater rhythmic presence and definition, even as the guitars remain persistently languid and McMahan's voice stays harsh. So, while "A Tribute To" barely picks up the pace compared to the opening track, the following instrumental "Being Held" brings back broken rhythms and sinister, dissonant undercurrents, in a style reminiscent of bands like June Of 44 or Shipping News, though softened and diluted in slow motion.

The second half of the record places greater emphasis on songwriting, showing how the band's focus wasn't just on sound, but also on a careful reconstruction, in song form, of what many of these same musicians had already deconstructed in their recent past: hence the velvety jazzy shades of "Snoother" — where McEntire's contribution is so pronounced it could be considered the "song" Tortoise never wrote — and the oblique electric swirls of the hallucinated "Tales [Live From The Crypt]" (featuring Kim Deal on vocals), before the true final masterpiece, "Moonbeams".

It's on this track that For Carnation definitively close the circle of their artistic journey, leaving behind, as their legacy, nine minutes of spontaneous perfection that, through shadowy melodies, slowed rhythms and caressing crescendos, sum up an entire artistic experience, restoring slow-core and post-rock to a human, emotional dimension in which tones and sonic experimentation merge with a sensibility for writing fragile songs that are far from lacking in fine melodic qualities.

A balance so precious it justifies the completion of Brian McMahan's artistic mission, as he will never return to his creation For Carnation, having laid this deeply personal keystone among the offerings of the fertile Louisville and Chicago scenes of the '90s, whatever label one chooses to pin on it.

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20/09/2009