Knife and Fork: The Higher You Get the Rarer the Vegetation (CD on Bureau Records)

Band: Knife and Fork
Label: Bureau Records
Title: The Higher You Get the Rarer the Vegetation

Review (1)	Release Details	Add Release	Releases (1)	Articles (0)
Cover Art (1)	Versions (0)	Edit Release	Releases List (1)	Reviews (1)
Pictures (0)			Summary (0)	Related (0)
			Jukebox (1)	List All (1)

Band:Knife and Fork
Title:The Higher You Get the Rarer the Vegetation
Reviewed By:Jon Rogers
Date Published:14/08/2012

Label:Bureau Records
Format:CD
Release Year:2012
Lookup:

Given that the album title comes from Surrealist painter Salvador Dali and that band member Eric Drew Feldman spent five years with Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, playing on three albums, you'd perhaps think Knife and Fork's second album was going to be archaic blast of 'freak out' weirdness. Full of random time and key changes and LSD-induced lyrics about purple Octafish - or something similar.

Fortunately 'The Higher You Get the Rarer the Vegetation' isn't. But it's not exactly your conventional pop record either, What you do get though is some Kurt Weill-esque blues mixed in with the avant-garde, and delivered with the dynamics of a Patti Smith or PJ Harvey thanks to the inclusion of singer Laurie Hall, from the San Francisco band Ovarian Trolley.

In fact the comparisons with Smith and Harvey (who Feldman has played and toured with) are perhaps most evident on the libidinous 'Pocket Rocket', its riff reminiscent of Harvey's 'Meet Zee Monsta'. A song that mixes up gender roles with Hall's brassy vocals delivering machismo lyrics about a "pocket rocket". A position the likes of Smith and Harvey (and other female singers) have done in the past. Still, it's hard to grow tired of the irony and a deflating of male sexual bravado.

Elsewhere, as with songs like 'Nicotine', 'The Higher...' is filled with film noir moans and groans and Weimar-era cabaret as if some down and out character is going to appear and show us the way to the next whiskey bar, accompanied by some toy symphony orchestra of freaks and sideshow attractions.

The highlight is the ten-minute 'The Revelator', a lush Oedipal tour de force ("I'm your mother/I'm your lover...") that simmers away and never boils over. It's full of Gothic (in the proper sense of the word) splendour and self-revulsion - "I'm sick/I'm sick/I'm sicker than you".

Admittedly, at times it can all err on the side of the melodramatic, as with 'Chariot' - but still Knife & Fork have managed to produce a rather captivating album. Quite a little gem.

Track Listing:

01) Tightrope
02) Chariot
03) I Count The Days
04) Tailspin
05) Pocket Rocket
06) Nicotine
07) The Revelator
08) Bury

First Previous Next Last

Related Links

https://www.facebook.com/knifeandforkmusic/

Commenting On: The Higher You Get the Rarer the Vegetation by Knife and Fork

Header

Comment:

Your Name

Your Location ie London, England

tick box before submitting comment

First Previous Next Last

Related Bands (edit)

Related Labels
Bureau Records

Review Header

Captivating avant garde, experimental rock on second album from Knife and Fork, the project of Californian musician Eric Drew Feldman, who spent five years with Captain Beffheart and the Magic Band

Articles A-Z
View All				A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K
L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z

The Higher You Get the Rarer the Vegetation - CD
Captivating avant garde, experimental rock on second album from Knife and Fork, the project of Californian musician Eric Drew Feldman, who spent five years with Captain Beffheart and the Magic Band

First Previous Next

Reviews A-Z
View All				A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K
L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z