It's rare that I come across music that's a complete mystery, and when it happens it snags on something inside me and I have to find out what it is that's stirred me. It's like my obsessive-compulsive attitude towards puzzles, possibly the benefits of a Christian upbringing that had me fascinated by the mysteries of faith. It's not an intellectual game, it's a need to find out what's happening to me, played out against the backdrop of religion, mystic encounter or the experience of art. You live with something and it changes you and you're not sure how. I became obsessed with Christ, with Murakami, with shamanism because they seemed to paradoxically make sense of a part of me in a way I couldn't understand.
The Doleful Lions are the first real mystery I've come across in a very long time. I'm totally hooked on them. ever since hearing Strange Vibrations courtesy of a Fluxblog recommendation. Most of the online reviews mention the skin-crawlingly dreadful term *indie-pop,* but that's emphatically not what's going on here. The songs are folk of a calibre that you'll rarely hear, certainty not in such consistent quality. At their besy they sound like ancient melodies that the Lions just happen to be using until they pass on to a new owner. I often rant on Barbelith about hymns being amongst my favourite songs, and this band have plenty of hymns.
Where things become totally skewed is considering the subject matter. UFOs, zombies, spirits, werewolves, Satan, serial killers... it's like they've found a bizarre gaping hole that no-one else noticed, an occult niche in which you know without knowing that what your aching, desolate heart really needs is beautiful and heartfelt songs that read like AD&D Monster Manuals. There's no hint of irony. These songs seem to mean something. And therein lies the mystery.
My best answer? In the vein of dueling with the Devil on a violin, Jonathan Scott (their singer and - I assume - lyricist) is bringing the mythology back into folk. But this isn't a twee backwards glance to yesteryear's faeries, or prog-rocking it up with King Arthur. It's a thoroughly modern geek-fest of references and ideas, like Wild Zero played by a whimsical folk band, as enthusiastic but with less silly flash and more heart. If I'm on the money it's a cracking plan, one that only someone who feels it deeply could pull off.
Now if only I could contact them and persuade them to do a concept album based on the works of Hayao Miyazaki... on that note, I'm off to watch Howl's Moving Castle. Hear this band by whatever means necessary. |
