Benjamin Blower
The Pillar of Smoke (Zang)
Well, this is strange. This is ramshackle… and really odd. I didn’t expect this at all.
I’d never heard Benjamin Blower before now. Listening to some older stuff makes me worried for him. Interview responses further this concern. So, his music? His music is pretty good, thanks for asking. Things sound broken and songs don’t follow any set patterns. There are samples and metallic percussion and voices and oh-my-God-so-many-things-at-once.
Some of it’s gamelan versus Sufjan Stevens. Some of it is pure folk. It’s almost like being in Brian Wilson’s head when his drug habit was at its worst – pure pop melody meets hallucinatory noise. ‘Everybody Knows But Nobody Cares’ is probably Blower’s most conventional song, complete with guitar solo. A close second is ‘O Unfaithfulness’, comparable in melody to Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. It’s all very beautiful and delicate until the end of the song, where it begins to sound like Isaac Brock hitting a guitar, before again subsiding into that luscious melody.
As an album, The Pillar of Smoke somehow manages to tread the water amidst a tsunami of ideas. Thankfully, it all works successfully and comes together with aplomb, without sounding convoluted or pretentious.
Euan L Davidson
