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Track Listings
| 1. Block My Eye |
| 2. Jitterakadie |
| 3. The Widening |
| 4. Bruno's Torso |
| 5. Obadiah In Oblivion |
| 6. Exploded View |
| 7. Fences Around Fields |
| 8. Peninsula |
| 9. Circa |
| 10. Belt Of Foam |
| 11. Unknown Track |
Product Description
Product Description
Death Vessel's debut album Stay Close was released in 2005 to critical acclaim. Since that album's release Death Vessel has toured with Iron & Wine, Low, Jose Gonzalez, and The Books, among others. Recorded with longtime producer/collaborator Pete Donnelly (The Figgs) at his New Jersey studio, and various locales across the US Northeast, Nothing Is Precious Enough for Us is Death Vessel's Sub Pop debut. While in recent years Joel has toured primarily as a solo performer, and the songs are inarguably mesmerizing and relevant in that setting, on record they take on a new life, thanks to his and Donnelly's inspired, and often unusual, arrangements, and the contributions of numerous friends and players. The album exudes a unique, wide-scope ambition. Its musical reach is fully extended---deep into the past, grounded in the present and nodding to the future. Owing to the gritty avarice of Joel's singular spirit, voice and musicality, the songs sound as progressive, experimental and modern as they do antique and old-world. The music is haunting and spiritual, mysterious and kind, ageless and contemporary, soulful and psychedelic. In short, it's where the requiem meets rock `n' roll.
"Now I am versed in silence/my throat hurts, not from yelling but from holding back", Joel sings on "Block My Eye", the album's opening track. And that's ok, because the music speaks for itself. And nothing ever sounded so loud, and so clear.
Review
4**** CD of the Week -- The Sunday Times
7/10
-- NME
Customer Reviews
My theory is their name makes people think they'll be some ghastly goth adolescent doomongering, but in fact it appears to me, along with their excellent first album, as if this band somehow took elements from my entire lifelong music listening history and managed to rewrite and put their spin on the whole damn thing.
It's not very often you are reminded of Nick Cave, The Incredible String Band, Johnny Cash and maybe the soundtrack to "Oliver" sometimes all in the same song.
Even though most people I've played it to think Joel Thibodeau sings like a girl, I've no real objection to that with a voice and songwriting skill as melodically original as his. (They said that about Neil Young too, didn't they?)
Maybe not for everybody, but personally, I just love it.
This album successfully hosts these alt. themes but also houses a true folk ethic, heard in the picked banjo of "Obadiah In Oblivion", as well as more straight-up, quiet-loud indie-rock as can be heard on "Peninsula".
Despite being on Sub Pop, the sound often veers more toward Nebraska and the sound of Saddle Creek, but misses the inimitable and identifiable production of Mike Mogis. As such the album sounds a little like a Rilo Kiley release, or one from Azure Ray, but miss the bite that Mogis provides. And so we move to the inevitable, the voice. Sounding like Jenny Lewis or Orenda Fink is no bad thing, heck these gals can sing. However it is a dude called Joel who fronts Death Vessel, and once this is out in the open we can all move past it comfortably.
His impersonation is so uncanny that the singer's gender is not in question until one reads up about the band. Only at the start of "Exploded View" does he resemble a male vocally, and then only at the track's onset. This amounts to a distinctive sound, but one that is not at all detracting. The greatest problem the record faces is whilst being endearing, is sadly not enduring. Not one of the tracks leaves a lasting impression, in the way that say, similar sounding Iron & Wine do. The mix of influences spread the record a little bit thin, which is peculiar for an album that also sounds quite simple and effective.
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