Pilgrim Road

The difficulty in leading a 16 piece band is touring.

Robert Fisher of Willard Grant Conspiracy has put up some dates for an Australian tour in late September. The problem it's a solo tour and so much of what makes Pilgrim Road such an astonishing album is the subtle, powerful orchestration. Listen to Vespers' finale or the gentle, awkward squeeze box in The Pugilist and you find hushed rewards.



But I shouldn't complain, Fisher's voice is worth the ticket price alone. As all the magazine critics have already pointed out, Pilgrim Road is the genre's best this year. What frustrates me is the lazy and wrong comparisons to Nick Cave. Fisher's roots lie in a very different place, deep in the heart of the bare-floor boards and picket fences of the South.

Cave seems to owe his influences to things beyond music - most obviously literature. His journey from punk savant to gothic grandeur has been so long and pockmarked by throwback (Grinderman) that it seems to my youthful eyes that Cave's only musical influence is his own artistic journey.

Uncut got it right by declaring Pilgrim Road the Americana album of the month. It's there in the plucked strings of The Great Deceiver and in the softly warbling voice of Iona Macdonald when she backs and then gently pushes past Fisher's baritone.

Certainly Pilgrim Road's ten tracks and 40 minutes have caught me off guard and vulnerable, I'll admit I wanted to fall for it as soon as I read the first glowing review. And so I will take the album inside and now defend it whenever necessary. But even if I hadn't decided to like it before hearing it I dare think Pilgrim Road would be incredibly hard to push away. Just when a moment in a song threatens to drag, to remind you of another song, Fisher allows in a single instrument or voice - crafting a new and entirely honest experience.

Controller

I came home from Pathology Lab No 2 today and decided it was time to get some work done on the slowly rising pile marked "to review with mild cynicism".

Unfortunately it's just not easy being cynical about Misery Signals. Produced as they are by my university bucket bong buddy Devin Townsend, this third album from the Canucks is pretty fuckin' awesome. And I'd be cheating myself if I didn't admit part of my love was a pure sugar kick from hearing decent metalcore for the first time since Norma Jean's Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child way back in War on Terror Year 2. Not that there's much in common between these two albums. Where Norma Jean wanted to stretch themselves and the listener Misery Signals goes in something of a different way by sticking intently to short sharp bursts.

Coma is a shimmering bit of wonder. Somehow the Townsend production only touches the guitars, leaving screamer Karl Schubach to himself. It makes me feel a bit better about a genre ready to die. I buy-in to the genre, the sub-culture and all of it because of the initial approach, yeah the fashion, yeah sometimes the sound but ultimately because I was always a bit player when it came to my obsessive hardcore and heavy metal buddies. It's the music I'd play if I could play.

Controller isn't the album I'd write but it is a fine riposte to much of the shit pedaled as somehow decent or even "groundbreaking", "massively heavy" and "brutal". And A Certain Death reminds me of the best band I never got obsessive about, Katatonia.