Thin White Rope Recommended List: For Jadarin....All reviews courtesy of Amazon.
Without shadow of a doubt this is one of the great rock albums of the nineties and the fact it got lost amongst the maelstrom that was grunge is so bloody typical it could be a crap England performance in a friendly. Thin White Rope released a number of terrific albums - "Sack Full Of Silver", In The Spanish Cave"- but The Ruby Sea is their consummate masterpiece, a scabrous sandblasted marvel of an album.
Led by Guy Kyser whose vocals sound like they come the throat of some unfortunate mummified being who's been sucking on hot air and scorched grit for a few centuries this band specialise in songs that evolve around shifting plates of scalding guitar , eerie tendrils of feedback and percussion that seems to evolve from the bowels of hell. Not a cheery proposition then, but this is music with a dramatic and compelling frisson and most importantly it all hangs on some truly outstanding songs.
From the grinding rhythms of the opening title track to the sprightly swing of "Bartenders Rag" in which Kyser wants it "To wipe away my blues ", to the gorgeously melodic strains of "The Lady Vanishes" The Ruby Sea is a desolate joy from beginning to end. Best of all is "Up To Midnight" where guest vocalist Joanna Galos -Dopkins counterpoints Keyers parched tones with her own sweet high range and then the song segues into the hypnotic "Hunters Moon" which has a circulating riff and sinuous bass that is downright gripping.
Where bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam were feted by the press and more importantly by the record buying people ,and quite rightly too at that time, an outstanding album like The Ruby Sea was allowed to sink unseen , unheard by the masses into the inky depths of oblivion., and that dear friends is just plain wrong. Like Kyser sings on the rasping marvel that is "The Fish Song": "You should have seen the one that got away".
The palette colouring these songs is rich and varied due to the brilliant work of the guitars (some arabic/spanishy acid stuff that creates convoluted but melodic patterns, courtesy of Kunkel/Kyser) and Guy Kyser's dark and abrasive vocals and poetry. Despite the aggression and gloom, counterbalanced by softer lyrical moments, this album is as multi-coloured as the artwork cover, as adventurous as the underwater pirate world of Captain Long John/Brown Silver.
In TWR you can hear traces of Jerry Garcia, Television, 80s R.E.M., Quicksilver, Joy Division, Johnny Cash, Pink Floyd, but their own personality is superior to just adding these parts together.
Plenty of people can play electric guitar, but very few can take you to places you didnt know existed and that's when you feel surprise and delight echo up and down your spine. Jimi Hendrix, Richard Thompson and Television have all done it for me - and Thin White Rope did it too. Put this Lp on, play It's OK, and be transported on a rollercoaster of howling feedback through the furnaces of hell and back. This is a live document of a wonderful band playing at their farewell gig, in, of all places, Ghent, that took guitar music to a gloriously thrilling and illogical conclusion - and hardly anybody knows about them.....and yes, Some Velvet Morning and Can's monlithic You Doo Right is here too :)
Sun kill moon.
