(from beat-sketching, July '03) / home / reviews index
Sphyr - 'A Poem
for M' (Fire Records LP)
A collaboration between Canadian post-rockers, a beat poet and an accordionist?
There is one track that makes me imagine a troupe of marauding street
musicians, but (don't run away!) for the most part this sounds like
no-one else. From its classical folk guitar and almost-hip-hop vocal,
the nearest comparison we at BS Towers can come up with is "like
Nick Drake playing guitar in Spain while Roots Manuva sings in the shower."
As you might expect from their time in Do Make Say Think, there's a
good use of space in this album, but it's all as bluntly ornate as the
graffiti-style handwriting that adorns the cover. Melodies repeat and
expand and contract, spiral and change like circles drawn over and over
with an ever-wobbly compass. There are plenty of warm instrumental passages
to contrast with a vocal that can be quite intense: "And now
I faaaaall… repentant." The vocal is kind of half spoken
and half sung -a performance that creates its own corresponding rhythm
with the music, and goes off on one when it means to add emphasis. A
stream of consciousness with a measure of control. It's a surprising
grower and, for its sometime dark urban matter, relaxingly good.
